History of cellular mobile communications

Cellular mobile phones are often regarded as a fairly recent innovation, however, they have been freely available in the UK for over 20 years.

The first type of mobile phone was large and cumbersome and similar in size to a large briefcase. These phones were analogue based and in the early days not overly reliable, due to the two existing network operators needing to install an effective infrastructure of network coverage quickly.
With the launch of the second generation (2G), consumer popularity rose steadily. Mobile phones became smaller and easier to handle. Network coverage improved greatly and it became more reliable.
During the period between December 1999 to December 2000 a total of 46,000 new users a day joined the UK mobile phone network. 5.1 million phones were bought in the UK during the 2000 Christmas period.