The Cellular Avatar and the Constitution of Communicative Mobility

PROTOTYPES The first portable sets: Patent: Motorola

1973

The firts cellular network

1977 AT&T

Analogue cell phones, various standards:

AMPS, NMT, TACS, C-NETZ, RADIOCOM 2000, RTMI/RTMS + information theory, transistor, silicon IC, electronics IDEATIONS: the IC The cellular architecture

Figure 8. Constitution of communicative mobility- the cellular system and the portable devices

After the second war, science achieved important successes such as stable, powerful and sensitive vacuum tubes and the transistor. In 1954, Texas Instruments started commercial production of silicon transistors instead of using germanium, thus enabling miniaturization of electronics. Moreover, in 1958, Jack Kilby revolutionized the electronics industry when he invented the integrated circuit at Texas Instruments. Intel introduced the first microprocessor, the 4004, in 1971. Designed originally for a desktop calculator, the microprocessor was soon improved and employed in cell phones. (Farley, 2003, online citation) These ideas and discoveries allowed the construction of the real portable handset. Invention for the real mobile handset is granted to Dr. Martin Cooper for Motorola (09/16/1975) for the radiotelephone

system. Although Bell Laboratories introduced the idea of cellular communications in 1947,

with the police car technology, Motorola was the first to incorporate the technology into a portable device that was designed outside of an automobile use (Farley, 2003, online citation). The first commercial systems with mobile devices had begun to operate. For example, in Germany, between 1958/59 various local mobile networks were united in a national network, A-Netz34, which remained in function until 1977. As Gold outlines, in 1968, the A-Netz covered 80% of the German territory, thus being the world’s largest mobile network. However, its exploitation remained limited to wealthy users (only 11000 in 1979). Also, the

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In 1968, A-Netz covered 80% of the German territory and was therefore the largest world public mobile network. Nevertheless, the network capacity was poorly used, given that a restricted category of people can afford to conduct mobile calls (11000 user in 1971). The sets were correspondly heavy, uncomfortable: (approx. 16 Kg for integration in the car) and very expensive. (Gold, 2000, p.81).

devices were very large, difficult to handle, and very expensive36. The second network- B- Netz (initiated in 1972) represented a small, but decisive step forward. B-Netz had an overall capacity of 27,000 users in Germany and lasted until 1985. Despite some steps towards the miniaturization of devices, mobile communication outside the area covered by the transmission station was not possible. A further extension of the mobility function meant also that persons from Luxembourg, Austria and the Netherlands could be reached. However, many drawbacks of the former A-Netz system remained unsolved.

The basic concept of the cellular system as a new ideation began in 1947, when scientists realized that by using small cells (range of service area) with frequency reuse, they could substantially increase the traffic capacity of mobile phones. In December 1947, Bell Laboratories' D.H. Ring presented the cellular concept for mobile telephony in an internal memorandum, authored by Ring and assisted by W.R. Young38. Basic elements were: a network of small geographical areas called cells, a low powered transmitter in each, and the cell traffic controlled by a central switch, by different cells. Trials for the first automatic radiotelephone service were conducted in the prototyping phase: the Stockholm trial, starting in 1951, conducted by the Swedish Telecommunication, the public trials of the prototype cellular system constructed by AT&T and Bell Labs (1978) in Chicago, with over 2000 trial customers (Farley, ibid.). By 1982, the FCC finally authorized commercial service for the USA, and the first American commercial analog cellular service or AMPS (Advanced Mobile Phone Service) was made available in Chicago (Farley, 2003, online citation).

In the diffusion phases, various wireless standards were established: AMPS (Advanced Mobile Phone System in the USA); NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephone in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway); TACS (Great Britain); C-Netz (Germany); the French Radiocom 2000; and the Italian RTMI/RTMS (Farley, 2003). These first systems were based on analog technology, meaning that radio signals were modulated so that they could carry information such as voice or data. Analog cellular phones worked like a FM radio, meaning that the receiver and transmitter were tuned to the same frequency, and the voice transmitted was varied within a small band to create a pattern that the receiver reconstructed, amplified and sent to a speaker. In Germany, a decisive step to the establishment of the cellular telephony system was represented by the analogue C-Netz, implemented in September 1985. This first cellular German system had multiple advantages: caller positioning through HRL; call forwarding from cell-to-cell; a national prefix (0161); the telephone number linked with a Chip (the forefather of the Sim-card); more channels; more users; cheaper prices; data transmission; fax. With 850.000 users, C-Netz reached in 1993 its full capacity. However, this network did not develop into a mass product.

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As Gold described: “Die Geräte waren mit einem Gewicht von etwa 16 Kg im wesentlichen für den Einbau in Fahrzeuge konzipiert und sehr teuer. Selbst ein Standardgerät kostete mehr als ein Kleinwagen dieser Zeit und die Bauteile waren so voluminös, das selbst bei Luxuslimousinen ein Gutteil des Kofferraumes damit ausgefüllt wurde. Alle Gespräche wurden von Hand vermittelt, wozu seitens der Post bis zu sechshundert Vermittlungskräfte nötig waren. Beim Wechsel des Sendebereichs wurde das Gespräch unterbrochen, und die Suche nach dem neuen Anrufkanal musste der Teilnehmer von Hand vornehmen.“ (Gold, 2000, pp. 81-82)

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In 1968, AT&T and Bell Labs proposed a cellular system to the FCC of many small, low-powered, broadcast towers, each covering a 'cell' a few miles in radius and collectively covering a larger area. Each tower would use only a few of the total frequencies allocated to the system. As the phones traveled across the area, calls would be passed from tower to tower (Farley, 2003, online citation).

The second stage, until the rise of digital mobile devices (GSM and enhanced UMTS), represented a clear step forward to the constitution of communicative mobility in a more stable and complex wireless avatar dispositif.

First of all, the social frame suffered significant qualitative changes when the first generation of mobile systems diffused (the 90’s). In the second development phase, from the implementation of the cellular system to the enhanced digital mobile value-added services, the society itself reached another stadium when networking, and overall association was generalized as a rule39. The social necessity for a cellular system supporting a quasi- ubiquitous communication was that everybody should be linked with everybody, everywhere and anytime. Also, the classes of social necessities singled out in the early phases continued their influence on mobile telephony development: traffic increased and diversified, corporation became more and more powerful and international, and the flexibilization of the working patterns generalized with the intertwining of the work time and pastime patterns, public and private spheres. It could be said that the cellular architecture and the portable device emerged from the underlying need of managing the integrated global network (Castells, 1996) brought by the incorporation of similar information technologies into historically very different businesses. Castells tried to understand various global events40 in a coherent manner, describing the main features of the emergent dominant structure – the network society- that is characteristic of informational capitalism. While some features of the network society have a socio-economical nature41, others directly define a new spatio- temporal disposition underlying mobile telephony usage. According to Castells, the network society is organized around new forms of time and space: timeless time and the space of flows. Social organizations reconstitute themselves according to the space of flows, which is made up of three aspects: technology, places, and people. This implies a culture of virtuality, characterized by timeless time and placeless space. These “dispositions” are meaningful for the mobile communication dispositif, too.

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Many researchers claim that mobile communication represented a societal phenomenon that served to sustain the ubiquitous communication and consumption culture. Additionally mobile communication was regarded as a means of networking in the information society (Oksman et al., 2003).

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As Huckle (2002) states, among them were the diffusion and deepening of IT revolution, including genetic engineering, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the demise of the international communist movement and the corresponding end of the cold war. This led to the re-structuring of the capitalism. The process of globalization associates with a surge in nationalism and to a crisis of the sovereign national state, but also with a crisis of democratic politics. Other major events were the rise of feminism and ecological consciousness. As a reaction to globalization, the communalist became stronger. Finally, a global criminal economy started to have a great impact on the international economy, politics and everyday life. (Huckle, 2002, online citation)

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“an informational economy strongly dependent on knowledge, information and the technology, a global economy involving strategically dominant activities working as a unit in real time on a planetary scale, the network enterprise which also extends its logic to other domains and organizations, and the flexibilization of work with the corresponding social polarization and social exclusion.” (Huckle, 2002, online citation)

Social frames: +Network society, -Monopol APPARATUS Limited broadband good coverage Expensive device USER: The international businessman Status Symbol Communiaction frane PROGRAMM Verbal conversation Professional, instrumental Cellular spatial arrangement

Figure 9. The mobile communication Dispositif avatar

Although the overwhelming tendencies towards networking favored technology production and diffusion, some components of the socio-political frame acted as suppressive forces. For instance, when mobile telecommunications first commenced commercial operations in many countries, industry specific economic regulation was relatively light. In contrast to fixed telephony, mobile telephony often started from a position of (limited) competition that empowered diffusion. A minimum set of regulations sufficed to ensure compatibility of the interfaces and integrity of public networks. Only after the terminals were withdrawn from the classical monopoly game and internal subsidies were distributed among different groups of network subscribers, could the true benefits of modern technology be discovered in the market (Arnbak, 2000: p.3). Another suppressive force lays in the relationship between technologists and policy makers. Modern governments had to handle an increasing number of issues that required extensive knowledge of science and technology for effective decision- making. Conflicts and delays were the results of this gap. For example, in the USA, the FCC can be again partially blamed for the big delay between the initial concept of cellular service and its availability to the public.

In the new constituted dispositif, impressions of natural communication, illusions of reality; closeness; and ubiquity, which define the mobile communication structure have started to build up. Although the usage programs were limited and communication restricted to verbal, there were signs that an explosive change was on the way, prefiguring a decisive reorganization within the dispositif. A significant gain of the technology at this time was that, for the first time, the cellular system and frequency reuse accommodated many users within the same area and ensured a real mobility in space. In addition, the increasingly miniaturized handset itself was really portable, easy to carry and handle. As a consequence of technical

advancements and value-added services, the segment of business mobile users started to prevail over public service users42_.