Introduction
In times past my interest in the mobile phone industry reached not beyond my concern to be able to call or sms my girlfriend. But this would change rapidly! Two months ago my subscription with my phone company ended and I had to look for a new subscription. With my new contract I received a new cell phone. But not just a phone, but at the same time a camera, for pictures as well as for (short) video’s, a tuner, an mp3-player, a video player, a voice recorder etc. and lot’s of extra applications that have become standard on these little machines.
The first weeks these exciting new tools had to be explored, but now that I am cooled down from excitement and using my phone in a regular way I notice some interesting changes to my “phone behavior”. The tuner application for instance I use more than calling or sms’ing. I have never been an enthusiastic photographer, but nowadays I find myself taking pictures all the time. In fact, I think that “calling” comes third in my “usage time table”, which is rather remarkable for a tool that still branded, marketed and sold by the name “telephone”. I realize that this is the case in my particular situation and probably not for the majority (yet). The point is that it made me think about a probable telephone in the future, how it will develop and what place it will take in daily business. In Japan, for instance, where all new gadgets in telephone business are presented and put on the market first, it is possible now to watch television on a mobile phone.[i]
What’s this paper about then?
At first this was my entrance for my study. The possibility of watching television on a cell phone could imply a whole new level of receiving information, both in a technological sense and a philosophical way. The problem however is that (analogical) mobile television has been around for over a decade. On top, this invention didn’t turn out to be successful, then why should the same thing in worse conditions (a very small screen as main argument) should become a hit. It is not my concern whether this will be a success or not, because simply I can’t tell. One can argue that looking at the past this innovation will fail, because no one is waiting for television on such a small screen, the other can response with the fact that this is a new age with new demands or that the application is embedded in an environment of a lot of successful tools (calling, sms, mms, wap, camera etc.) and therefore will be embraced as an acceptable and welcome extra. The future will tell.
Shortly, I will focus in this essay on recent innovations, introduced by a brief history of mobile phones, and on the possibilities for advertisement in the future.
Mobile history[ii]
The mobile phone has been undergoing several transformations over the years. In the beginning cell phones were huge and not the pocket-size we are used to today. But how and when did the whole thing started. I will give a short summary of the history of the mobile phone up to what we are able to do today.
It all started in 1880 with Graham Bell communicating with his cousin Charles Bell with the Photophone (after having invented the telephone in 1876), but this invention has little to do with the mobile phones we use today: Bell used optical transmission, a technology that soon would be abandoned for radio transmission. But wireless it was!
Figure 1 The Photophone
Every country and continent has his own history of mobile phone technology: for instance in America it all started in 1921, where the police force of Detroit used a mobile radio technology, operating on 2MHz, for their vehicles.[iii] But it was Lars Magnus Ericsson (the founder of the homonymous company in 1876) who used the “mobile car phone technology” as a consumer (!) back in 1910, although it was a little different than you should suspect: he tapped regular telephone wires with long sticks and a dynamo and made contact to the nearest operator.
Figure 2 Ericsson on the road
Army divisions and telephone companies used this method beforehand, but Ericsson was the first citizen who used this technique, driving through the country keeping his family updated. Later on in 1919 Ericsson and his company joined forces with two other company which resulted in the foundation of Svenska Radio Aktiebolaget (SRA) which were to build radio receivers.
The earlier mentioned police force communication system in Detroit, USA, worked in a one-way transmission mode: policemen got “beeped” (based on Morse-code) on which they returned a call with a regular phone nearby to the station. In 1928 the “beep” was replaced by an actual voice, but it still was a one-way transmission. This invention was purely made for public authorities and no-one considered making the consumer mobile. At least, that is what most people think: Bell Laboratories claim they invented a mobile car telephone in 1924, voice based and two-way transmission!
Figure 3 Carkit anno 1924
Just before WWII the national Dutch mail, telegraph and telephone service, the PTT, invented the “NSF type DR38a transmitter receiver”, a mobile radio telephone. Figure 4 Mobile...
Developed in 1937 and operational in 1939 it was the first practical mobile telephone in Holland. The war broke out and Germany confiscated a lot of these models for war purposes: “It is interesting to note that a number of the sets were used for short range communication by the hated German security force “Ordnungs-Polizei”.”[iv]
During the war commercial development on mobile phone technology ceased, but military research and development filled this hole and the walkie-talkie was invented by Motorola during war-time.
The Dutch National radiotelephone network, inaugurated in 1949, was the world’s first nation-wide public radiotelephone system, working with American equipment due to the loss of the mobile radiophones produced in the pre-war period and the damaging of the existent communication network. The American equipment was affectionately known as “Link” sets, named after the manufacturer Fred M Link Radio Corporation. After the conspicuous successes of the initial Link nets, the equipment started to be used for commercial private networks. Additionally, a growing need was felt for a nation-wide public radio network, connecting a mobile to any telephone-subscriber. As early as 12 April 1949 the first base station in the first phase of the National network was inaugurated, using two semi-duplex radio channels with frequencies repeated throughout nation-wide installed Link type 1498 base stations.[v] The limited size of the country and the innovative work from PTT made this possible. In the years to follow the network expanded and improved but still on a low scale and not with today’s quality, as the following quote expresses: “Holland, a country with many rivers and canals, many subscribers of the National network were owners of inland freight vessels. One unhappy day, a Master had a set installed and proudly made his first radio telephone call to his wife. As he was rather far away from the nearest base station, the conversation faded away now and then. On one occasion the wife of the Master said:” I can’t hear you anymore, Dear”, to which the helpful operator coming into the line saying:” Your husband is sinking away, Madam”. The reaction was a loud cry, then silence..”[vi]
Since then a lot of developments and improvements have been made on mobile communication networks, which I will skip, because of the international non-parallel innovations and systems. This remained a problem until the nineties where GSM became the standardized generally throughout the world. The most important development worth to mention is the switching from above explained technology to cellular networking.
Cellular: “The type of wireless communication that is most familiar to mobile phones users. Called ‘cellular’ because the system uses many base stations to divide a service area into multiple ‘cells’. Cellular calls are transferred from base station to base station as a user travels from cell to cell.”[vii] The main difference with the old way is the re-use of frequencies: “Frequency re-use is the critical and unique element of cellular, not handoffs, since conventional radio telephone systems uses them as well.[viii] The first commercial cellular system was developed by Bell and started in 1969, using payphones aboard trains.
A battle of years between Bell and Motorola over incorporating technology into usable devices resulted in the victory of Motorola in 1973: Dr. Martin Cooper (nowadays considered as the inventor of the portable handset) called his rivals at Bell with a prototype called the Motorola Dyna-Tac.[ix]
|
|
The First Cellphone (1973)
Name: Motorola Dyna-Tac
Size: 9 x 5 x 1.75 inches
Weight: 2.5 pounds
Display: None
Number of Circuit Boards: 30
Talk time: 35 minutes
Recharge Time: 10 hours
Features: Talk, listen, dial |
(Source: http://www.cellular.co.za/cellphone_inventor.htm)
Since then multiple networks around the world were generated all relying on their own technological basis and standards. See the following table:
|
System Name or Standard |
Start Date |
Country of origin or region it operated in |
|
AMPS |
1979 trial, 1983 commerical |
United States, then world wide |
|
AURORA-400 |
1983 |
Alberta, Canada |
|
C-Netz (German) (C-Netz, C-450) |
Begins ‘81, upgraded in 1988? |
Germany, Austria, Portugal, South Africa |
|
Comvik |
August, 1981 |
Sweden |
|
ETACS |
1987? |
U.K., now world wide |
|
JTACS |
June, 1991 |
Japan |
|
NAMPS (Narrowband Advanced Mobile Phone Service) |
1993? |
United States, Israel, ? |
|
NMT 450 (Nordic Mobile Telephone)
NMT 900 (Nordic Mobile Telephone) |
1981
1986 |
Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Oman; NMT now exists in 30 countries |
|
NTACS/JTACS
NTT
NTT Hi Cap |
June, 1991
December, 1979
December, 1988 |
Japan
Japan
Japan |
|
RadioCom (RadioCom2000) (French) |
November, 1985 |
France |
|
RTMS (Radio Telephone Mobile System) (Italian) |
September, 1985 |
Italy |
|
TACS (Total Acess Communications System) |
1985 |
United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Austria, Ireland |
|
|
|
|
All these networks can be filed under the so called “analog” or “First Generation cellular systems”. With the introduction of GSM (Groupe Speciale Mobile, nowadays known as Global System for Mobile Communication) the second generation (2G) of mobile phones evolved: from analog to digital.
GSM: 2G
“It’s difficult to recall the bad old days. Just imagine a car that will tackle the autobahns of Germany but stops dead when you drive it over the border into France. This pretty much sums up the mobile phone scene in the early 1980s.”[x]
The problem with the old network was the lack of capacity and the international diverse and incompatible systems. 26 national telephone companies in Europe joined forces in 1982 to develop a standard technology. It took over 10 years for GSM to become fully standardized throughout Europe and replace the old systems. At the same time America developed its own digital network, not completely similar to GSM but alike, called IS-54. Japan goes a slightly different direction, with Japanese Digital Cellular (or Personal Digital Cellular) in 1991 and the Personal Handyphone System in 1995. These early digital schemes all use time division multiple access or TDMA(/CDMA). The next step will be the 3G(third generation) phones.
(Source: http://www.apple.com/mpeg4/3gpp/)
3G technology is essential to my subject, because this technology makes everything possible which this paper is referring to: incorporated media technologies like television, advanced use of internet and off course advertisement possibilities. “3G stands for third generation, a generic wireless industry term for high-speed mobile data delivery over cellular networks. 3G networks allow users to send and receive bandwidth-intensive information such as video, video conferencing, high quality audio and web data on-demand, virtually anytime and anyplace.”[xi] I won’t go into details, because this is way too technical and developments on this area are reported daily. 3G is based on the UMTS technology, which stands for “Universal Mobile Telecommunications System”. From the online UMTS-forum: “Today’s mobile customers have already demonstrated a taste for “non-voice” and other new services. More than 24 billion text messages are sent every month [source: GSM Association September 2002], and now customers are embracing Mobile Multimedia Messaging (MMS), an evolution of text messaging that adds pictures and sound elements. UMTS will build on these first steps towards a mobile multimedia future, allowing operators to offer exciting new services to consumers as well as business users.”[xii]
(Source: http://www.umts-forum.org/servlet/dycon/ztumts/umts/Live/en/umts/MultiMedia_PDFs_Papers_Paper-1-August-2003.pdf)
Figure 5 The future?
(Source: http://www.umts-forum.org/servlet/dycon/ztumts/umts/Live/en/umts/MultiMedia_PDFs_Papers_Paper-1-August-2003.pdf)
This history is indeed short and simplified due to the several international developments which happened at the same time, but almost never in a unified way. Treating every single country is therefore impossible and in this case not interesting. But, a short overview to point out some landmarks gives a good background to understand the problems that mobile phone technology, especially the lack of centralized direction in the past involve. Nevertheless, major companies and governments have joined forces in the recent years to improve global communication. Examples are the implementation of GSM in the eighties and 3GGP and the UMTS-forum recently. The mobile phone is just as many inventions a mix of pioneers and war technology slowly introduced to and embraced by the consumer. Nowadays, the success of the cell phone is not near its end and it’s matter of time before advertising has found his way into this medium.
Mobile philosophy
The introduction of the mobile phone has increased our ability to communicate with one or another at any given time or place. It somehow must have vitalized our exchange of communication and changed in a way our social standards. A lot of research has been done and philosophical presuppositions have been made on the impact of the internet on communication and social life, but somehow the (emergence and social influence of) mobile telephony has been slightly overlooked in recent academic history. James Katz, one of the few who does write about it, says in his book “Perpetual Contact: Mobile communication, Private talk, Public Performance” this: “Yet, despite billions of dollars and hours spent on mobile communication, there is but slight academic interest in the social aspects of these processes.”[xiii]
“At the moment, as the new millennium starts, we are witnessing, and being addressed by, a ubiquitous campaign to promote the mobile phone. This mobile propaganda is extraordinary in its energy, its resources and its cultural impact.”[xiv]
This quote comes from a philosophical essay written by George Myerson which is called “Heidegger, Habermas and the mobile phone”. In this essay, Myerson tries to give an answer to the question: What is happening to the idea of ‘communication’? His definition of communication is: “…you communicate in order to ‘say what you want’. This does not mean what you mean to say – it means what you have to have.”[xv] To take this in mind I would like to state that advertising could determine what you “want to have”. The mobile phone as he argues is not a need to communicate, it’s the expression of the need to communicate: the materialization of the desire to need. Advertising works in the same way: imposing on the people the desire that they “have to have”. An example is a recent novelty: for the first time in history a company, Nike, decided not to show a commercial on television first but to launch it on mobile phones instead. The marketing management says that “Nike and innovation go hand in hand with each other”[xvi]. The moment you download this commercial on your phone, a communication has been established between you and Nike. This communication, crucial for both parties, expresses the desire (the ‘need’) to be innovative, again for both parties.
The director of Icemobile, responsible for the whole idea, says that “in the future the spreading of commercials via mobile telephony could be used as a viral marketing tool”.[xvii] This remark is highly interesting, considering the implications it makes on future use of mobile phone (technology) and future advertising.
The first computer virus ever on a mobile phone has now appeared last June, the BBC-news website tells us: “A malicious mobile phone virus could wipe contact numbers and other data stored on the handset, as well as sending out messages purporting to come from the victim’s phone.”[xviii] This virus spreads itself via Bluetooth technology: a wireless data transmission device which makes it possible to connect multiple devices to each other within a radius of 30 meters. Many forms of data can be transferred this way, “good” data such as text, images, applications, but also “bad” data such as viruses. The next step to advertising is therefore not so far: looking at the internet, more and more people are connected 24/7 to the internet. The next generation (3G and 4G) offer more and better applications for using internet on a cell phone. Abstracting the 24/7 connections to the mobile, implies that users will make the machines increasingly receptive for data, ergo for advertisement too.
Jeffrey Boase and Barry Wellman talk in their article “A plague of viruses: biological, Computer and Marketing about viral marketing and the impact of the internet: “The internet has brought its own novel forms of viral marketing because the technology makes it easy to pass on messages- to on or one hundred closest friends.”[xix] One-to-many messaging is already possible with the current mobile technology standard. Now that the first telephone virus has emerged, which contains the connotation viral, new ways can be found for advertisers to expand their activities.
It may be said that increasing the number of data transmission options (Bluetooth, GPRS, Internet, Infrared etc.) simultaneously enhances the entries for companies to inject marketing tools into mobile phone technology.
Let’s return to Myerson who concludes in his essay with the phrase: “That old-fashioned word ‘wireless’…has been reborn as the symbol of a new utopian dream of a wireless world, where ‘freedom’ will mean the power to communicate on your terms, ‘whenever’ and ‘wherever’ you choose.”[xx] However, this freedom he speaks of he subscribes purely to the consumers of mobile phones. This freedom allows marketers on their turn the opportunity to communicate ‘when’ and ‘where‘ they ‘choose’ too. And they probably will: a survey on the potency of using the cell-phone as a marketing tool(i.e. advertisement) by the “Reveries Magazine”, a magazine made by and for marketers, had this result: “Forty-six percent of the 401 surveyed marketers said the viability of mobile phones as a marketing medium is “good”, “very good” or “excellent” today. By the same measure, 64 percent felt that mobile marketing would be “good” or better as a medium five years from now.”[xxi] And somewhat later: “The advent of so-called 3G and 4G technologies will provide the equivalent of broadband speeds to mobile phone handsets within the next five years. Once that happens, everything broadcast can deliver now to your computer or TV could be delivered your phone”[xxii]
Conclusion
Writing about this sort of subject is difficult, because talking about events that are possibly about to happen is philosophizing about a future which is uncertain. Taking in account that the first decades of mobile innovation the development was scattered and lacked direction, it is interesting to see that since two decades cooperation has been stimulated. The biggest accomplishment so far is the development and realization of GSM, the digital standard for mobile phoning.
If a commercialization of this unexploited area of advertising breaks through, I can’t tell. But, taking a look at recent novelties, television on your mobile, the innovation of Internet on the cellular and the implementation of multiple data transmission applications, the possibilities for advertising increases too.
“…you communicate in order to ‘say what you want’. This does not mean what you mean to say – it means what you have to have.”[xxiii] I have argued that this phrase is appropriate for consumers as well as for marketers. It’s based on mutual dependence, to establish a communication and to express or impose the “desire to need”.
[i] During the writing of this paper several news websites reported similar innovations emerged and made possible in amongst others Canada, Britain, Finland and Norway
[ii] Based primarily on http://www.galaxyphones.co.uk/mobile_phones_history04.asp, including the pictures with no source reference
[iii]http://inventors.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.wave%2Dguide.org/archives/waveguide%5F3/cellular%2Dhistory.html
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Posted at 10:42 am by Eelco
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Jun 22, 2004
Posted at 04:27 pm by Eelco
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Jun 9, 2004
Posted at 01:25 pm by Eelco
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Jun 7, 2004
TV on your phone, preview(Japanese)
Posted at 07:53 pm by Eelco
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May 28, 2004
Because yesterday's entry is rather unorganized, I will put everything in order.
The
subject of my paper will be
mobile (digital) TV and how this will or is able to increase and vitalize (instant) communication. The subsequent question is how advertisement is treated in regular digital TV and how this can be incorporated in mobile TV.
The
phenomenon is (mobile) digital TV. KPN is taking over this wireless cable company Digitenne(KPN) to implement this technology into mobile phones. (mobile tv).
The combination of TV, internet, video applications on your mobile phone could lead to a more diverse manner of communicating. Video messaging is already emergent, photographing has become pretty standard on recent phones and old-fashioned calling has never been impopular. Uploading different kinds of data(text, pictures, video) to a website is becoming more easier every day.
To get an idea of how advertisement is treated in regular digital TV I take a look at England, where digital TV is rather succesfull(SKY). This will provide a good insight of how advertisement on a mobile couldbe handled in the future.
What about literature and theory? At first I was thinking about remediation, but that subject has been treated about 5 times too many on this university, and it's not very affiliated (off course it is in one way or another) with this course so I will abandon that one.The textual poaching theory by Henry Jenkins, I do think is appropiate to this investigation. Further and deeper literature I haven't found yet. I found some interesting websites on digital TV though, which could be insightfull.
The future of TV
future of tv advertise
Prisoners of D-TV
Internet or TV?
(I also found a site from a company who is specialised in special recording techniques. With this technique you can watch a tv-show or movie from whatever angle you like. Perhaps this will someday be integrated into the mobile phone. http://www.behere.com/))
I totally understand that talking about this futuristic subject is dangerous, not knowing if this new application will ever become popular. I don't think it's necessary whether it will succeed or not. This is about filosophical implications, opportunities for communication, active audience theory and so on.
What influence will this new technology on instant messaging and sharing information? Uploading data from your phone instantly to a intermedialized weblog or something alike or even implement this technolgy in new developed games are not so far away developments. Or is this all just an old-fashioned look at television and a (forced) denial of the affordances of the internet? And what about advertising?This are the questions I like to examine.
Posted at 10:50 am by Eelco
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May 27, 2004
Thinking the last weeks about sites and advertising and triggering people to their products I couldn't really get hold of the subject. Wondering about the determined outcome(see previous entry this day) of this participate subjects, seeing no original entrance, because we discussed it so many times in class, I sort of panicked about my paper.
With the help of someone up there, I got this email from a website I never visited and they put my attention on this mobile TV. The mobile TV in itself isn't a novelty. Ten years ago you saw sporadically, really hip people(...), with this handhelds, only able to see channel 1,2,3, in a rather poor state to. Combining mobile phones, wireless digital technology and TV is a very interesting one. One could question the expected succes, but it's filosophical implications and it's technical opportunities makes it very interesting.
The mobile TV never became a groundbreaking succes. Why? I can only wonder. The limited amount of channels? The not so astonishing screen quality? The price? Or is it just that people don't want to watch TV "on the road"? I have no idea? Why did CD-i failed and the CD-ROM and later the DVD did succeed?
KPN is not the first one I noticed: http://www.zdnet.be/supercenter.cfm?id=28809&scid=13 and http://www.zdnet.be/news.cfm?id=36480 . For the boys, Playboy TV on a little, very tiny screen: http://www.portablegear.nl/nieuws-detail.htm?NID=1689
Although a lot of people are very sceptic the phone companies, hardware(NEC, SAMSUNG) as well as software(KPN, Telfort) are seriously pushing this new application forward.
How then could this new technology be implemented in my paper? I already mentioned remediation, but I don't think I want to emphasize too much on that. How about "textual poaching", a theory I find very interesting. Digital television has the ability, like in England is already the case, to watch whatever program at a particular time that suits you best. This gives you the opportunity to determin your own tv-flow. Perhaps it will become possible to take pieces out of every program and edit your own program. Off course, this is already possible with VCR, and digitalized footage(online), but never mobile. Direct communication with images and scenes from tv. Upload a blog directly with video: a videoblog. This combined with the already existing possibility to videotape with your phone increases the vitality of communication and sharing information.
What I find interesting is how they going to treat the problem of advertising. To do this, I will have to take a close look at England. I will have to find out whether it is succesfull, how they handle advertisement et cetera.
Posted at 10:14 pm by Eelco
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more interesting stuff, what say I, FLABBERGASTING COOL SHIT
I just read that KPN-telecom wants to take over Digitenne, a company which provides wireless digital television. http://www.zdnet.nl/News.cfm?id=35861&mxp=41. For the future they have plans to incorporate this application into mobile phone technology to provide digital television on your handy!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/26/mobile_phone_tv/ . I say WOWSERS! Remediation in his ultimate form. Combining internet, phone, games, GPS, sms,photography, even video etc into this little bastard is becoming the standard nowadays and now this again. In the future we won't need a computer, television, VCR/DVD, photocamera etc anymore, just bring your cell-phone.
Posted at 08:03 pm by Eelco
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