International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

Within a decade of its commercialization, mobile communication is often more used than landline telephony. Whereas in the early 1990s only the privileged few used mobile communication, by 2010 more than half the world's population have access to a mobile telephone. This seemingly effortless adoption has been accompanied by changes in our sense of safety and security, the way we coordinate everyday life, the way teenagers experience their coming of age, and the way we use and experience the public sphere. The use of voice and the growth of texting have revised the way we think about interpersonal communication. Mobile, radio-based communication, including what is known as mobile telephony, has its origin in the work of Marconi and radio telegraphy. The ability to modulate voice signals allowed for the development of services such as police radio, which first appeared in the 1920s in Detroit. This use of radio to dispatch various services expanded to include police and fire departments, taxis, and even rural veterinary services (→  Radio: Social History ). Radio-based communication in the “switched” telephony era had to wait until after World War II. Some of the first experiments with radio-based telephony – the so-called wireless local loop – were carried out in the eastern Colorado town of Cheyenne Wells in the United States. Local farmers, living as far as 30 kilometers outside ... log in or subscribe to read full text