The first mobile call in Russia

Key moments of history of mobile communication

On the first of September, 1981 there was first really international standard of mobile communication of NMT. Start of the first commercial network NMT took place in Saudi Arabia where the Ericsson company started NMT network on the basis of the solutions. Since that moment of Ericsson became the main inspirer of development of NMT technologies worldwide. They were widely adopted in Russia and Scandinavia.

Ten years later, on the first of July, 1991, the first mobile call on GSM network was performed – it took place in Sweden where based on technologies of Ericsson the GSM mobile network was built. Ericsson acted as one of key developers GSM, and the lead engineer of the company Jan Uddenfeldt was recognized by one of founders of this standard.

Today the official number of cellular data users in Russia exceeds 220 million: for the last ten years growth was improbable 2700%. With start of 3G networks Russia entered the next stage of market development where the new horizons open in the field of mobile broadband access. Mass distribution of smartphones, netbooks, tablet computers and other mobile devices leads to rapid growth of demand for mobile broadband access and does it by a key factor of success in the market.

Today the level of penetration of smartphones in Russia - about 20%. According to the forecast of Ericsson, by 2015 the share of smartphones will almost treble - and they will make over a half of all mobile phones in the country. With the advent of faster mobile Internet based on HSPA and HSPA technologies + Ericsson expects that the volume of traffic of data in Russia will increase in mobile networks by 25 times within the next five years.

At the same time, with development of M2M-technologies of Ericsson predicts the exponential growth of number of mobile connections - not only people, but also "machines". So by 2020 evolution of technologies will lead to formation of the connected society in which possibilities of mobile communication will use not only 5 billion people - as today, but also 50 billion attached devices. In the new connected society everything that will benefit from connection in a single network, will be connected to it – and it will make life of people more comfortable, and business work - is more effective. At least two billion such connections is necessary to Russia.

"The Russian industry of cellular communication significantly promoted since the first mobile call 20 years ago. Our company is proud of the fact that we managed to become the full-fledged technology partner of Russia on this way, - the CEO of Ericsson in Russia Maria Radke says. – In 2011 we celebrate 130-year anniversary of business of Ericsson in Russia, and the last 20 years we were focused on development of cellular communication. Our technologies found broad application in the different industries as mobile communication positively influences development of economy, education, health care, the smart urban environment and other spheres".