Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/683118
18 THE MOBILE TELEPHONE INDUSTRY There have been mobile telephones since the 1950s. The fi rst generation of mobile telephones used land mobile technology with high-level transmitters. This limited the number of mobile telephone users in any area. The hard- ware itself was large and required a lot of electrical power so the use was limited to automobiles. In spite of the problems, there was considerable demand for mobile telephones by the 1960s. A user had to wait a considerable amount of time for a channel to become available to use their mobile telephone and because the number of users was limited, there was also a long waiting list of prospective users that wanted a mobile telephone number. Engineers at Bell Labs came up with a completely different type of mobile telephone system, which instead of high-level transmitters, used a network of low-level transmitters. The goal of this system was frequency reuse so that more active mobile telephone users could be ac- commodated in limited spectrum. A lot of intelligence was necessary to make this work, both at the network level and at the subscriber level because as one moved around, the call would be "handed off" to a different transmitter and frequency. Because diagrams of this system showed a neat arrangement of octagons, it became known as "cellular" telephones. First-generation cellular telephones were analog and took advantage of 800 MHz spectrum taken away from UHF TV channels. Although the fi rst-generation electronics were large enough to require trunk mounting in automobiles, the demand for these telephones was huge. The cellular providers quickly were behind in installing more and more network equipment to handle the demand. Eventually, the network caught up with the demand and the service became highly profi table. Technology improved to the point where one could have a handheld cellular telephone. First-generation handheld cellular telephones were big and heavy and were known as a "brick" because they resembled a brick in size and weight. The industry also recognized that they needed more spec- trum to carry the demand so they petitioned the FCC to fi nd more. The next generation of cellular systems was at a much higher frequency, around 1.8 GHz–2 GHz. Both US government stations and private microwave stations were relocated to other spectrum with the costs being paid by the carriers. These new cellular systems were digital and much more spectrum-effi cient than the fi rst-generation analog telephones. The industry learned that the key to keeping up with the demand for capacity was to keep reducing the size of the cells. Today, one sees references to "micro-cells" and even smaller "pico-cells." To make this happen, antennas must be designed to minimize coverage and the higher 1.8 GHz–2 GHz frequencies are preferred. Also, the industry having completely converted to digital found itself providing data services as well as voice ser- vices. At fi rst, short text messages were supported but as technology improved, full Internet access and email be- came available. Combined with much improved handsets, known as "smartphones," a user today has much more communications ability than just making voice calls. This also dramatically increased the need for capacity. The cellular industry simply cannot install new equipment fast enough to keep up with the demand. The industry con- tinues to ask for more spectrum for additional capacity. They have learned that the higher frequencies work much better for small cells and are looking at frequencies up to 5 GHz. But Congress, with the Spectrum Act of 2012, proposed to make 600 MHz available for this purpose. The lower frequency is not as attractive to the cellular industry for several reasons. The fi rst reason is that the handheld an- tenna becomes too long to fi t into today's small handsets. The second reason is that the coverage is too good for ef- fi cient spectrum reuse. The third reason is that transmit antennas become much larger for equivalent performance than the higher preferred frequencies. Exactly how the cellular industry will respond to the 600 MHz auction is not known. Already, one carrier, Sprint, declared that they would not participate in the auction. The FCC has spent a lot of effort working on the auction ATSC 3.0 The digital television standard now in use is about twenty years old. Technology has greatly improved since that time and today there is an active research effort to defi ne im- proved television quality with a new standard. Higher defi - nition video, known as "4K," and an improved RF trans- mission system known as "COFDM," has been proposed. However, the proposed standard, termed "ATSC 3.0," is incompatible with the existing system and exactly how the US can transition to a completely new television transmis- sion system has not been decided. The primary obstacle is that there are no "unused" UHF television channels today and after the 600 MHz band is taken away, it will be even more diffi cult to make the transition.