Over the weekend the technology that drives your mobile phone celebrated its 20th birthday. For those of you that don’t know, and I am afraid to admit that not only was I around but I also owned one of the very first mobile phones as a trial unit, on September 7th 1987 15 phone companies agreed to build the GSM (Global System for Mobile) networks. Today is is calculated that there are 2.5 billion mobile phone accounts.
“There’s no doubt that at the time of the agreement in 1987 no one had an idea of the explosive capabilities in terms of growth that would happen after the GSM standard was agreed” said Robert Conway head of the GSM Association
At the time of their launch they were seen very much as a rich persons toy, but now they have effectively become a ubiquitous item, particularly valuable in the developing world where a traditional infrastructure doesn’t exist. In the UK for example it is said that there are actually more mobile phones than there are people, which is somewhat mind blowing and bizarre at the same time.
Via [BBC]
That is pretty amazing – just like now there are something like six web pages for every person on the planet – unreal. I wonder when there will be more ipods than people in the US