A Brief History of Mobile Telecommunication in Europe

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.