Australia is celebrating three decades of the mobile phone, with the first ever mobile phone network in Australia having been set up three decades ago back in 1981.
Most people these days are reliant on their mobile phones, taking these gadgets pretty much everywhere with them. Whilst mobile phones may have been designed originally for use by sales and business people, they have become hugely popular amongst the general public over the years, and these days people from all walks of life and of all ages, including elderly people and kids, have their trusty mobiles with them wherever they go.
Most people will find it difficult to remember the days when we did not have a mobile phone at hand whenever we needed to make or take a call, and these days, of course, mobile are used for so much more, such as getting online, social networking, even taking photos and videos. Some younger people will never even have experienced life without mobiles.
The first mobile phone network in Australia was set up thirty years ago by John Boland and a group of his Telecom engineers. The first ever mobile phone in Australia was made on Australian public network, which Telecom built in Melbourne. It is difficult to imagine, but these engineers believed that mobile phone technology was a fad that would be short lived and would only ever be used by a handful of people such as businessmen and sales people.
The first phones were nothing like the handy little devices that we have today. They were the size of bricks, had no features other than to make and take calls, and could not even store more than sixteen numbers. Yet, in today’s money, they cost thousands of pounds.
Source – The Courier Pigeon
