Mobile Phone Technology - 1G – Analog Era (1980s)

1G – Analog Era (1980s)

1G (First Generation) mobile phones marked the beginning of wireless communication for the general public. Here's a detailed look:

✅ Key Features

Technology: Analog transmission (AMPS – Advanced Mobile Phone System)

Functionality: Voice-only communication

Modulation: Frequency Modulation (FM)

Bandwidth: 30 kHz channels

Network Type: Circuit-switched

📞 Devices

Motorola DynaTAC 8000X (1983)

Weight: ~1 kg

Battery life: 30 minutes of talk time

Cost: ~$4,000 (USD)

Nicknamed: “The Brick Phone”

⚠️ Limitations

No encryption — calls could be intercepted.

Poor voice quality and coverage.

Large, heavy, and expensive devices.

High power consumption, short battery life.

🌍 Where It Was Used

First deployed in Japan (NTT, 1979).

Rolled out in the US (1983) and Europe soon after.

📈 Impact

First step toward mobile freedom.

Enabled early business and emergency communications.

Set the stage for digital evolution in the 1990s.

1G Analog Era

The 1G Analog Era of the 1980s marked the beginning of mobile telecommunications. 

Here’s a brief overview:

Introduction: 1G refers to the first generation of mobile networks, introduced in the 1980s. Unlike later digital networks, 1G relied on analog audio transmissions.

Key Technologies: Different countries developed their own standards, such as Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) and Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS).

First Commercial Network: Japan’s Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) launched the first commercial cellular network in 1979, covering Tokyo and later expanding nationwide.

Limitations: 1G networks had low security, were prone to signal interference, and had limited capacity compared to digital systems.

Transition to 2G: By the 1990s, 1G was gradually replaced by 2G digital networks, which introduced encryption and better efficiency.

The first automatic analog cellular systems ever deployed

The first automatic analog cellular systems ever deployed were NTT's system first used in 1979 for car phones in Tokyo (and later the rest of the country of Japan), and the cellular systems released by Comvik in Sweden in September,[42][43] NMT in the other Nordic countries in October of 1981.

The first analog cellular system widely deployed in North America was the Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS).[15] It was commercially introduced in the Americas on 13 October 1983, in Israel in 1986, and in Australia in 1987. AMPS was a pioneering technology that helped drive mass market usage of cellular technology, but it had several serious issues by modern standards. It was unencrypted and easily vulnerable to eavesdropping via a scanner; it was susceptible to cell phone "cloning," and it used a Frequency-division multiple access (FDMA) scheme and required significant amounts of wireless spectrum to support.

On 6 March 1983, the DynaTAC 8000X mobile phone was launched on the first US 1G network by Ameritech. It cost $100M to develop and took over a decade to reach the market.[44] The phone had a talk time of just thirty minutes and took ten hours to charge. Consumer demand was strong despite the battery life, weight, and low talk time, and waiting lists were in the thousands.[45][46]

Many of the iconic early commercial cell phones, such as the Motorola DynaTAC Analog AMP, were eventually superseded by Digital AMPS (D-AMPS) in 1990, and AMPS service was shut down by most North American carriers by 2008.

In February 1986, Australia launched its Cellular Telephone System by Telecom Australia. Peter Reedman was the first Telecom Customer to be connected on 6 January 1986, along with five other subscribers as test customers before the official launch date of 28 February.