A Brief History of Mobile Telecommunication in Europe
Theo Dunnewijk & Staffan Hultén
#2006-034
Since the introduction of mobile telephony in the early fifties in
Europe, US and Japan the demand for this service exploded. It seems that
the latent demand for mobile telecommunication services for decade's
continued to be very strong. Since the introduction of cellular
technology the capacity of the services increasingly became able to meet
the massive demand. Next and future generations of mobile
telecommunication technologies bring increased transmission speed and
more versatile services. This forces network operators to organise multi
sourced information flows supplied by service providers to increase the
network effect of the system instead of providing the network
infrastructure and leave the content to the users as in pure voice
telephony. The drivers and inhibitors behind the emergence and recent
developments of mobile telecommunications systems in Europe are
highlighted in this paper. Liberalisation of the telecom markets in
Europe drove new entrants to the market and curbed excessive pricing.
However, in recent years the lack of challenging service is the main
cause for the wavering development of newer generations of mobile
telecommunication services.
UNU-MERIT Working Papers
ISSN 1871-9872