Origin of Mobile Cellular Network Technologies and Markets in Germany and China

The inventive foundation of mobile cellular technologies was laid about 100 years ago. Wireless voice service was commercialised in the 1940s by AT&T. In Germany, public and non-cellular wireless service was established by Deutsche Bundespost in the late 1950s and the first analogue cellular network called C-Netz emerged in the mid-1980s. In China, the first mobile cellular networks called TACS-A and TACS-B were installed by Ministry of Post and Telecommunication in the late 1980s. While describing the events in Germany and China, this paper concentrates on discussing the related technologies and their impacts in the marketplace. A comparison summarises some important findings. Japan and Europe's Nordic countries were the first nations to commercialise the 1st generation analogous cellular technologies. There existed A- and B-Network in Germany and China, but the network nature of them is quite different. The market development in Germany and China was similar. The enlarged network capacity accommodated gradually more subscribers and prices related to the cellular services fell continuously. However, China's fee system was more complicated and has adopted the RPP regime, while Germany has been using the CPP billing. The article concludes that implications such as the relationship between science and technology, time lag between scientific discovery and technological applications and technology spillover from military to civilian area are the economic lessons learnt from the story of cellular origin.