Elsevier

Telematics and Informatics

Volume 18, Issues 2–3, May–December 2001, Pages 143-158
Telematics and Informatics

Technological developments and socio-economic issues of wireless mobile communications

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0736-5853(00)00026-5Get rights and content

Abstract

During the last 10 years, wireless communications can be considered as the fastest growing segment of telecommunications. In fact, mobile telephones have become an everyday accessory for hundreds of million people, and they are increasingly being used in the most developed and many developing countries in the world. Current forecasts indicate that demands for wireless access will exceed the number of fixed access lines by year 2010. This paper examines the technological developments, as well as the worldwide social-economic impacts of wireless mobile communications. More specifically, it gives an overview on the technological developments of wireless mobile communications, describes the evolution towards the next-generation systems, analyzes the reasons for the growth rate of subscribers, and the related social development. As a conclusion, it suggests several solutions in response to dangerous behaviour generated by wireless terminals.

Introduction

The telecommunications community is going through a huge revolution that will shape the century. The network will be everywhere and computing will shift from professional desktop towards consumer-oriented computing, using compact wireless personal multimedia devices (Danneels, 1998, Negus et al., 2000). Wireless personal communications can be considered as the fastest growing segment of telecommunications. In fact, mobile telephones have become an everyday accessory for hundreds of million people, and they are increasingly being used in the most developed and many developing countries in the world (Kim and Litman, 1999). In some countries, substitution of fixed telephony by mobile telephony has been taking place as operators have changed their strategies from offering and promoting mobile telephony as a premium service into offering mobile telephony as everyone's default solution for voice and data communications, at tariff rates that are competitive with fixed network rates (Lossie, 1999). Wireless coverage is almost universal in developed countries, while in developing countries, it is increasingly becoming a substitute for wireline networks as the costs for installing wireless networks decline. Current forecasts indicate that demands for wireless access to global telecommunications will reach 1 billion users by the year 2010, exceeding the number of fixed access lines (Pandya, 1999).

Mobile communications have experienced enormous growth during the last 10 years. First-generation systems such as AMPS, TACS and NMT using analog transmission for speech services were introduced during the early 1980s (Rappaport, 1996). Second-generation systems, which use digital transmission, were introduced in the late 1980s (Steel, 1990). Global systems for mobile communications (GSM), personal digital cellular (PDC), IS-136, and IS-95 are second-generation systems which offer services covering speech and low-bit-rate data (Tabbane, 1997). These systems will further evolve toward the third-generation (3G) systems in order to offer more advanced and innovative services, such as high-bit-rate and broadband multimedia services (Fasbender and Reichert, 1999; Sollenberger et al., 1999). Furthermore, the emerging 3G systems is supposed to make information services instantly available while introducing a more powerful and flexible way of doing business. In this changing environment, telecommunication operators and service providers will want to exploit innovative technologies and create new revolutionary services while maintaining their existing customer base.

This paper examines the technological developments, as well as the worldwide social–economic impacts of wireless mobile communications. It is organized as follows. Section 2 defines some basic concepts. Section 3 gives an overview on the technological developments of wireless communications. Section 4 describes the evolution towards the next-generation systems, as well as the standardization, requirements and services forecast. Section 5 analyzes the economic impact of wireless technology, whereas Section 6 states some cases of social developments and Section 7 gives some concluding remarks.

Section snippets

Basic concepts

A vision of personal communications should embrace the integration of several communication concepts, approaches, or systems into one interconnected and interworking network (Cox, 1990). This integrated network should support different wireless and wireline communications devices optimized for their specific environment. As a result, a person is able to initiate or receive information anywhere at any time. The concepts enabling to provide universal personal communications include terminal

Technological developments

Nowadays, wireless communications encompass many technologies, systems, and services optimized for different applications. Technologies and systems that are currently provided or proposed to provide wireless communications and services can be grouped into several distinct groups. The following sections briefly describe each of them.

Towards the next-generation systems

The current second-generation digital mobile and personal communication systems are based on national and regional standards that are optimized for region or country-specific regulatory environments. Therefore, they are unable to interoperate with each other and can provide mobility only within their radio environments, as well as within geographic regions with a specific standard. Efforts are under way to define the so-called 3G mobile telecommunication systems, or more generally

Economic considerations and issues

The economic impact of wireless mobile communications is obvious. In the following, the reasons for high-penetration rates, as well as the industry investments and the generated revenues are examined.

Social impacts

Mobile communication is changing the society's behavior. The development of new intelligent services applications such as advanced messaging, data and video transmission, location technology, and remote monitoring can make an impact on people's lives and greatly enhance social developments around the turn of the century.

Concluding remarks

As we move towards the next-generation systems, and the price of current wireless devices and services continue to decline, more and more people subscribe for wireless services in order to get access to a great variety of broadband and advanced services, including video and INs. This contributes largely to the economic development of the world, by increasing industry investments and revenues, and by creating a lot of jobs. In fact, mobile telecommunications represent more than 20% of the total

Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada under grants 140264-98 and 115877.

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