Fifty year ago on the 3rd of April 1973 Marty Cooper, a Motorola engineer in the USA, made the first ever phone call from a handheld cellular phone to a colleague working at Bell Labs. That prototype “brick phone” gave 30 minutes of talk time after a 10 hour charge.

It would take another ten years before the first handheld mobile phone, again made by Motorola, was available commercially to make calls over a cellular service.

Mobile telephony services had been available from the 1950s, but incoming calls had to be manually connected to the nearest base station by an operator and mobile terminals were large, expensive and normally confined to cars.

Bells Labs were at the forefront of the development of cellular systems with the concepts of cells and handover between cells originating from that USA-based organisation. But the first automatic cellular commercial phone service was offered in Tokyo in 1979. However, this service was confined to car phones.

The first cellular service that allowed international roaming was released in Nordic countries including Finland in 1981. The phones available for this system were portable (in a shoulder bag) but not “handheld”.

Other automatic cellular systems followed in other countries with the USA system using that first handheld phone arriving in 1983.

But it wasn’t until the 1990s that the ownership of a mobile phone expanded beyond a narrow base, with the development of the GSM digital cellular system in 1991 leading to the smartphones we all use today.

Here at PTT we are interested in telecoms history but our prime focus is providing training in the telecoms services and systems in use today and looking ahead at developments that will shape the services of tomorrow.
PTT online courses range from a course introducing mobile technology to those giving details of advanced mobile systems.

Telecommunications providers have an incredibly important role when it comes to systems security.
Not only do they hold large amounts of data on their customers, but their networks also carry sensitive information, such as financial transactions, personal data and confidential business information. Telecommunications networks are critical infrastructure, therefore any breach in system security can have severe consequences, including financial losses, reputational damage and legal liabilities.

Telecommunications networks face various security threats, such as hacking, malware, phishing and denial-of-service attacks. These threats can be initiated by both external and internal sources such as state-sponsored hackers or by employees intentionally or unintentionally compromising the network’s security.

To mitigate these risks, telecommunications networks must implement robust security measures to protect their systems and data. Providers also must comply with regulatory requirements to ensure the protection of personal information. The Telecommunications Security Act, which became law in 2021, gives the UK government powers to boost the security standards of the country’s mobile and broadband networks.

The PTT online course “Telecommunications systems security” provides an overview of the protection of personal data held by telecommunications providers against misuse and the protection of telecoms systems against intrusion and fraudulent misuse.

As with any new generation of mobile system the benefits of 5G sold to the public mainly centre on the improvements in download speeds. While 5G does offer a significant speed increase for Internet access, there are many other advantages for both the service provider and its customers.

However, it can be argued that rather than consumers, the largest beneficiary will be enterprises. For them 5G offers the potential for new ways of increasing productivity and reducing costs. 5G also promises innovative new services from third parties or telecoms providers themselves that benefit consumers and businesses alike. Serving an expanding Internet of things, mobile edge computing, private mobile networks, differentiated services, and fixed wireless access, are all facilitated by 5G.

Many of these facilities depend on a standalone implementation of 5G but the majority of 5G mobile services currently available rely on bolting on a 5G radio access network to an existing LTE core network.

The challenge for service providers is to weigh up the potential of new services for enterprises against the cost of implementing a 5G core network. Educating those enterprises of 5G’s features and capabilities will also be necessary.
PTT’s contribution to 5G training includes the launch of two new online courses:

New 5G online courses
PTT is pleased and proud to announce the release of two new courses that provide an in-depth coverage of the features and operation of 5G mobile systems including the co-existence of, and operation with, LTE (4G) systems:

4G and 5G radio access networks
Advanced mobile systems