Need Help with finding facts about the History of Mobile Phones

smithysmith

Hi, I have been given an assignment in college to find out the History of mobile phones. I have googled this found most of the stuff, however there are some things I can't seem to find any info on.
What I'm looking for is stats and figures, such as when the first mobile was released in Ireland, price of calls/texts back then, cost of the phones, available networks, what % of people had phones, etc.
If anyone knows any links to sites where I could find this info., or if anyone knows anything revelant to the topic, it would be great, I've been looking online this ages and have had no joy!
Thanks in advance

Columba Rad

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eircell & http://www.amarach.com/studies-and-reports.htm

There's two to start you off...

smithysmith

Thanks a million! That has helped so much!

Random

Would be very interested to read your assignment after it's all graded etc if you can share it with us

smithysmith

I might do that, its due for next week, so when I get it back, and ifs it good enough, I'll put it up to view!
Still stuck on one thing, does anyone recall how much it cost to make a phone call when mobiles came out at first, how much the line rental was, and the cost of sending a text message.
I'm so surprised how hard it is to find those 3 things!

dade

FYI Motorola brought out the first commercial mobile phone, the Dynatac 8000x

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A1082521 or here


or maybe here

have a look here too

Text message? you're having a laugh, SMS tech wasn't around back then, you didn't even have an address book that you could pin names and numbers to properly. bloody awful. your phone was just that a phone, none of this email, SMS, Web browsing, cameras or mp3 players.

have you tried calling someone in Eircom about the historic charges, they probably have a press office that you could contact. try their investor relations page

ardmacha

A university or major library probably has old phone books. These had charges for calls to and from EIRCELL mobiles, get one around 1988. In those days long distance land line calls were very expensive and calls to mobiles were the same price.

Please summarise your findings here or put a link, so we can all read it.

antodeco

Didnt read everything! If you're looking for some other specific facts, PM me. I know a fair amount about the background of TACS/GSM/etc.

ardmacha

The Irish Times archives are free for the rest of this week. There is a lot of interesting history about mobiles and telecoms generally.

For instance in
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1986/0307/Pg015.html

We learn that Eircell will initially have 1000 subscribers who will pay between £1395 and £2100 for the equipment as well as a quarterly rental of £105 for a service with 30 miles of Dublin.

£2100 was about 5% of the cost of a Dublin house in those days.

dublander

did a thesis on mobile phone operators before. a really good source is looking at older theses in the library as the majority of them will have price information for the year they were written, also giving u facts etc from that year