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30 years of digital mobile communications: when mobile phones came to Germany

2022-06-30T09:59:00.596Z


The first mobile phones were as heavy as a piece of wholemeal bread. In the beginning, hardly anyone knew what to do with it, also because of the steep prices. That should change quickly.


The ancestors of the iPhone: The former head of design at Motorola Rudy Krolopp shows the world's first mobile phone "Dyna TAC 8000X" and the "International 3200" popular in Europe.

Photo: AP

When modern mobile communications started in Germany in the summer of 1992, not everything went as planned.

The post minister at the time, Christian Schwarz-Schilling (CDU), had already issued the first licenses for digital mobile networks to Deutsche Telekom (“D1”) and the Mannesmann Group (“D2”) in December 1989.

However, it took several months to set up radio masts and transmitters.

And above all, there was a lack of suitable cell phones that customers could actually use to make cell phone calls.

On July 1, 1992, Telekom invited to the official launch of its D1 network.

But in order to be a day ahead of that competitor in the history books, Mannesmann brought his own presentation forward by two weeks – a PR coup.

At the time, »D2-Privat« was not able to sell its own mobile phones to its customers.

The first D2 customer came from Bochum and had previously bought one of the first "mobiles" based on the GSM standard, an Ericsson GH-172, in an electronics store.

A pound phone

However, the legendary "bone" soon prevailed on the market, the Motorola International 3200. Today's head of technology at Vodafone Germany, Tanja Richter, remembers: "The bulky phone weighed more than 500 grams and had a battery capacity for a maximum of 120 Minutes of talk time and cost around DM 3,000. That was a small fortune for the time.” Richter began her career at Mannesmann Mobilfunk and came to Vodafone when the company was taken over in 2000.

Initially, only a few people in Germany were able to share the early enthusiasm for digital mobile communications, also because the prices were very steep.

Telekom and Mannesmann started out with prices per minute of just under two Deutschmarks.

The basic fee was more than 70 Deutschmarks.

Flat rates that cost a fraction of that are common today.

In April 1993, just under a year after the start, several hundred thousand participants were already on the move in the two D networks.

There could have been a lot more if only there had been enough cell phones.

Mannesmann's head of technology at the time, Georg Schmitt, translated the abbreviation for the digital mobile radio standard GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) as a deep sigh: "God, send Mobiles!" But little by little Motorola, Ericsson, Nokia, Siemens and others brought the idea the desired devices on the market.

Prices also fell.

A new service made mobile phones particularly attractive to young people.

We are talking about SMS (“Short Message Service”) with its 160 characters.

The first SMS with the message "Merry Christmas" was sent on December 3, 1992 to Vodafone employee Richard Jarvis.

In 1994 Mannesmann and Telekom introduced SMS for their customers, and just five years later Germans were already sending around 3.6 billion SMS.

Even the dictionary included the word "Simsen" in its vocabulary.

In 1999, the number of mobile phone customers in Germany doubled to 48 million.

The success finally cost Mannesmann his independence: the British giant Vodafone took over the Düsseldorf company in 2000 after several months of defensive fighting at a price of 190 billion euros.

The providers E-Plus and Telefónica O2 also entered the German market in the mid-1990s.

E-Plus came under the umbrella of Telefónica in 2014, so that the duopoly of the early years has since developed into a neck-and-neck race between three providers.

With the auction of the licenses for the fifth generation of mobile communications (5G), 1&1 Drillisch, a new player, entered the stage in 2019, but has not yet set up its own network.

The market as a whole is huge: last year the number of mobile phone connections in Germany rose to 161 million, so that in purely mathematical terms there are almost two connections for every person.

The iPhone disempowers radio operators

A decisive moment in the history of digital mobile communications was the premiere of the iPhone in 2007. The first iPhone only transmitted in the comparatively sluggish EDGE network.

But the innovative »Jesus Phone« by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs helped the smartphone to break through and gave new life to mobile communications.

The iPhone also changed the balance of power – from the providers to the device manufacturers from the USA and Asia.

With the first Samsung Galaxy in 2009, the eternal duel between Apple's iPhone operating system and Google's Android operating system began, which has shaped the smartphone world to this day.

The success of free messengers like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Apple iMessage, Signal, Telegram and Threema was also dramatic.

They outstripped SMS years ago and thus wiped out a billion-dollar business.

After all, the web shops and shops of Telekom, Vodafone and Telefónica, which sell mobile phones and additional services such as mobile phone insurance, bring a lot of money into the till.

Providers ask for more money

The providers are currently making a new attempt to participate in the economic success of the large Internet corporations.

In a joint appeal in mid-February, Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, Telefónica and the French provider Orange called on the major platforms to partially assume the costs of the European digital infrastructure.

Data traffic is increasing by up to 50 percent annually, they say - and more than 70 percent of all data traffic is attributable to video streaming, gaming and social media.

The providers of such services would benefit from highly scalable business models at low costs.

But it remains to be seen whether the providers will ever see money from the major internet services.

Christoph Dernbach, dpa/tmk

Source: spiegel

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