FAMILY5 - Dear Uncle Doug

Dear Uncle Doug,

I want to update you on the development of mobile cellular telephones, the rapid advancements in capability, and the fantastic growth of mobile telephone users and coverage networks since you first introduced the cellular concept in an internal memo at AT&T’s Bell Labs in 1947.  

In your memo, titled “Mobile Telephony - Wide Area Coverage,” you outlined a standard high-capacity land mobile radio telephone system that could provide wide area coverage with a modest allocation of frequencies, using low power transmitters for small-area “cells,” and permitting significant frequency reuse within the service area.  You identified the ideal cellular hexagonal layout; identified the concept of dividing cells into even smaller areas (cell splitting) to increase capacity when demand increased; and identified the need for automatic "handoff" techniques as callers moved from Point A to Point B.  Finally, you noted that base stations could control the transmitter power of the mobile transmitters to reduce interference.

Figure 5 from your cellular concept memo:  Example of a hexagonal cell layout with corresponding internal cell splitting arrangement.

Unfortunately, the technology to accomplish this revolution didn’t exist in 1947.  From reading your six patents published after 1947, I see that you then spent the next 25 years at AT&T Bell Labs researching microwave technology (even applications like microwave ovens), while cellular systems awaited enabling technology. 

It was the invention of microprocessors and electronic switching in 1971 that supported the implementation of your cellular concept.  As you know, Uncle Doug, your colleagues at Bell Labs, Richard Frenkiel and Joel Engel, began to apply improved computers and electronics to make a cellular system work.   (I’ll bet you were frustrated at having to retire in 1972 at the mandatory AT&T age of 65, just as the true development of mobile cellular systems began.)

Ironically, the first cell phone call was made on April 3, 1973 by Motorola manager Martin Cooper, who stood in midtown Manhattan and placed a call to his rival Joel Engel, then head of research at Bell Labs in New Jersey, to announce his success.  Thus began the era of the handheld cellular-mobile phone.

It took another decade for cell phones to reach the public, after microprocessors and affordable computers became generally available, and specific programs for managing caller handoff had been written for them.  Also, the infrastructure, including a wide-area coverage cellular network, had to be put in place to support cellular systems.

Meanwhile, Engel and Frenkiel's ongoing work led to a series of proposals to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the 1970s, and became the foundation for the cellular systems which revolutionized mobile communications and made today's convenient cellular services readily available. 

I don’t know how closely you followed these events, but Frenkiel went on to lead the team of Bell Labs engineers who wrote specifications for, and refined, the cellular system architecture; reported on system tests to the FCC; and helped plan the first wave of cellular systems for deployment in the early 1980s.

It must have warmed your soul, to see the first commercially available handheld cell phone, the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, hit the market in 1983.  The device was 10 inches tall, not including its three-inch flexible whip antenna, and weighed two pounds.  It was priced at $3,995 (over $12,340 in today’s dollars) and offered a half-hour of talk per battery charge, which took roughly 10 hours.  This cell phone offered direct dialing and an LED for dialing, or recall, of one of 30 phone numbers.  A series of DynaTAC phones were manufactured by Motorola from 1983 to 1994, and were affectionally known as “bricks.”

The first cell phone available to the public was the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, manufactured from 1983-1994.  It was 10 inches tall and weighed two pounds.

Compared to the slow start (36 years:  from 1947 - 1983), what’s happened since in wireless is like a roller coaster ride of fast, continuous innovation.  Since 1983, AT&T (and other companies) have invested untold brainpower plus hundreds of billions of dollars to expand and upgrade cellular networks time and again.  Each time the network became more capable, major economic and technological benefits followed.

In 1983, after erecting a network of cell towers, AT&T launched the first commercial cellular telephone network in Chicago, starting a cellular service business that continues today.  Cellular service companies began signing up paid “subscribers” for their cellular service, and also charged for making and receiving voice calls by the number or length of calls.

Cell towers were an enabling innovation for cellular communication.  Tall, vertical-mast cell towers, were topped with antennas, typically oriented in three or four directions.  Their height enabled cell tower antennas to have line-of-site connection to other cell towers to send, and receive radio signals from other cell towers in the network.  This ensured seamless cellular connectivity across a wide coverage area.  Today, a cell tower can send signals to phones up to 20 miles away in rural areas.  In densely populated cities, with many physical obstructions like buildings, the range might be reduced to a mile or two. 

As the cellular network was improving in capability and coverage, you witnessed a profound change in mobile phones, when in 1992, IBM developed the first “smartphone,” adding to voice call capability, a computer with a speaker, a microphone, a touchscreen keypad, a display screen, a battery, a transmitter, and an antenna.  The smartphone was released to the public in 1993 by BellSouth.  Besides being a mobile phone, it also contained a calendar, address book, world clock, calculator, note pad, e-mail, send and receive fax, and games.  Standard cell phones started evolving into “smartphones.” 

Over the years, due to more advanced batteries and more energy-efficient electronics, a trend started away from the early cumbersome large “brick” phones towards smaller hand-held devices.   Costs for cell phones and cellular services came down as the total number of subscribers jumped from hundreds to millions of people.

In the 1990s, an alternative to voice communication was developed.  Called texting, it enabled cell phone users to send and receive short messages consisting of alphabetic and numeric characters.

Also in the 1990s, the internet - the global system of interconnected computer networks - became available to cell phone users.  With the internet, mobile phones experienced greatly improved connectivity.  Talk about rapid growth, by the year 2000, 300 million people around the world were online.

I’ve summarized some of the tremendous advancements in mobile cellular networks and mobile phone capability since 1983 in the table below.  Please excuse me for using a table in a letter Uncle Doug, but remember, I was an engineer too.

 

Network Generation	Availability	Capability
1G	1983 start	Reliant upon analog radio systems; users could only make phone calls, could not send, or receive text messages.   To make the 1G system work, cell towers were built around the country.  However, the network was unreliable and had some security issues.  Cell coverage would often drop, it would experience interference by other radio signals, and due to a lack of encryption, it could easily be hacked.
2G	1990s	Replaced analog with digital transmissions, thereby increasing speed, flexibility, and capacity.  Text messaging and access to media content like ring tones and news headlines were available.
3G	Early 2000s	Characterized by high-speed internet access. For the first time, streaming of radio and television to handsets became possible. Rapidly expanding applications software, better screen resolution, and constantly improved interfaces made cell phones easier to navigate, and more fun to use.   Cell phone memory increased to that of computers just a few years earlier, and speed improvements continued.  The purpose of the cell phone shifted from a verbal communication tool to a multimedia tool, often adopting the name “mobile device” rather than being called a phone at all.
4G	Early 2010s	Five times faster than the 3G network - can in theory provide speeds of up to 100Mbps.  All mobile telephone models released from 2013 onwards support this network, which offers connectivity for tablets and laptops as well as smartphones. Users experience better latency (less buffering), higher voice quality, easy access to instant messaging services and social media, quality streaming, and faster downloads.
5G	Late 2010s/Early 2020s	Affects how we connect our devices to the internet.  Improved speed and massive network capacity with new flexible internet connection trends to include the home or office, smart cities, ehealthcare, and connected cars. Theoretically has download speed 20x faster than 4G. Very low latency means that time-delay for online gaming, video calls, and critical mission applications will be significantly lower.  Full potential is yet to come.

 

You got to personally experience the first two generations (1G and 2G) of cellular networks before your passing in 2000.  

Let me bring you up to date on the amazing growth of cellular coverage, mobile telephones, applications, and usage:

Starting in large cities in the early 1980s, cellular coverage via cell towers steadily extended to population centers, transportation corridors, the balance of cities and towns, and finally more rural areas. 

Today, four companies own and operate their own wireless networks in North America:  AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and U.S. Cellular.  AT&T has the largest market share with about 46% of subscribers.  AT&T and T-Mobile now cover virtually the entire continental U.S., most of Mexico, and a significant area in Canada. 

AT&T's cellular coverage today.

At the end of 2022, there were over 142,000 cell towers and over 450,000 outdoor small cell nodes across the U.S.  Today’s cell towers can handle thousands of calls at the same time.

Today’s cell phones, mostly smartphones, fit in the palm of your hand, and weigh only a few ounces.  Apple and Samsung are the market leaders in the U.S. smartphone market. Together the two manufacturers account for almost 80% of smartphone unit sales in the country.  Apple’s iPhone is the most popular smartphone among U.S. American consumers, with over 50% of subscribers using an Apple device in 2023.   Revenue from smartphone sales is forecast to reach roughly 100 billion U.S. dollars in 2023.

Apple’s Iphone 15 Pro was introduced in 2023.

 

Today’s cell phones do everything but slice bread.  In addition to voice telephone capability, your phone can take you to an online marketplace where you can shop for applications (apps) - computer programs designed for a particular purpose or activity.  As of December 2023, there are an astounding 8.93 million apps available for downloading.

The most popular cell phone activities today (in order of % of users) are texting, photography, internet surfing, automobile navigation, online shopping, social media, listening to music, banking, video calls, shooting videos, reading the news, playing games, and streaming TV.  And there are so many more!

I use my cell phone mostly for online research; reading books; photography; playing Scrabble with a lady in India; checking the latest news, weather, and scores; and watching TV sports.

Cell phones have largely replaced dictionaries, paper note pads, watches, timers, and flashlights.  Video conferencing via cell phones has reduced the requirement for many face-to-face meetings with doctors, lawyers, and financial planners.

Today, almost all Americans (97%) own a mobile phone. This translates to about 325.4 million people. 

The average American spends 4 hours and 25 minutes on their mobile phone each day and checks their phones 144 times per day.  Adults on average make and receive around five voice calls a day. 

Smart telephone usage has expanded from the “head of the family” to everyone in the family, down to youngsters, each with his/her own phone.  Children, on average, get their first phones at 11.6 years old.

You probably haven’t received proper recognition over the years for your revolutionary ideas about mobile cellular telephones.  In 1947, few (no one?) realized how profoundly this technology would emerge and evolve.  As it turned out, cellular wasn’t just an incremental improvement.  It was a new category that transformed communications and our lives!

You might be pleased to see that The Atlantic magazine, in a 2011 article about the early history of cell phones, wrote:

“In 1947, the same year that the transistor was invented, and 40 years before there were a million American cell-phone subscribers, an engineer at Bell Labs sketched out the rough design for a standard cellular phone network.  In just eight pages of body text, D.H. (Doug) Ring laid the intellectual groundwork for what is our most widespread digital information technology. … it took a long time for technology to catch up to the vision, but the basics are there.”

I know that your daughters, Maggie and Cathy, are well aware of, and appreciate, your visionary work.  And your brother, my father, Clinton, also an engineer, always spoke very proudly of your work.  Your nephew Al, my brother, has highlighted your contributions in his online history of the family.  And that online family history is referenced in the current Wikipedia article “Douglas H. Ring.”

From left to right:  Clinton, Douglas, and Bob Ring in 1994.

 

Can you believe, Uncle Doug, what your 1947 visionary cellular concept has grown into?  Mind boggling!  And think about what the future may hold.

 

With my enduring respect,

Your nephew Bob