The mobile phone is 50 years old

(Fornebu, 1 December 2016) When the mobile phone turns 50 in Norway on 1 December, it will have made its mark on society. This is the story of the middle aged technology that continues to revolutionise how we work, communicate and live.

‘Mobile technology has been pivotal to the development of the modern welfare state. At home, school and in working life, we see how the mobile phone simplifies and streamlines people’s daily lives. We’re investing billions into the mobile network to provide customers with access to the network wherever they go,’ says Berit Svendsen, CEO of Telenor Norway.

New website for telecom history
This year marks 50 years since the mobile phone first came into use in Norway. The first public mobile phone service saw the light of day on 1 December 1966. The day was marked at Telenor’s headquarters at Fornebu with the unveiling of an exhibition of historical telecommunications treasures and the launch of www.telenorkulturarv.no, a digital overview of Telenor’s protected sites across Norway.

‘We are a company with a 160 year history in Norway, and I’m proud and delighted to make the cultural heritage created by this history more accessible to the majority of people through the website telenorkulturarv.no. Not to mention doing it on the very day that we are celebrating such a cracking 50 year old,’ says Svendsen.

Manual and national from the beginning
From the beginning - when it was a national calling service with just five base stations - to today’s multifunctional element of the public domain, it is safe to say that the mobile phone has revolutionised our lives.

The differences between today’s smartphones and the first phones on the OLT (Public Land Mobile Telephony) system and the NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephone) system are enormous - both physically and functionally. 

NMT was possibly the most advanced mobile system of its time.Norway was world leader in terms of the number of mobiles phones in relation to its population.

Into the digital era
Thanks to GSM, the mobile phone took the next step into the digital era, embracing all the opportunities for service development that offered. All later systems, such as 3G, 4G and eventually 5G, are based on the digital version of mobile telephony from 1993 known as 2G - second generation mobile telephony. NMT as the first, while OLT is in many respects a prelude.

2G technology was developed for voice calls and text messaging, but also for the transfer of data. However, it was only when GPRS arrived that the data transfers got up to speed.

Fast higher data speeds were brought about by UMTS - also known as 3G - when it launched in 2001. Voice calls and data merged into the rich media content available on the Internet.

The introduction of 4G in 2010 opened up the opportunity for high speed broadband on mobile phones, which is what we have today.

‘A good mobile network provides industry and the public sector with the ability to simplify their working processes. We’re proud of the work done in Norway as part of the development of the mobile telephony service that is at the heart of our lives today,’ says Berit Svendsen.