Chapter 2
Drivers for LTE/SAE
2.1 Introduction
This chapter gives an overview of the reasons for the standardization and deployment of LTE/SAE. First, a short revision of the mobile generations and their characteristics is provided. Then a short summary about the development of the data services follows.
2.2 Mobile System Generations
The use of mobile communications has grown exponentially in recent decades. The early walkie-talkie terminals that were able to provide user-controlled point-to-point radio connections for voice showed the potential of the wireless world.
Larger scale mobile communications development began when the pre-first-generation networks, sometimes referred as generation 0, were deployed. One of the first commercial radio mobile systems, Automatic Radio Phone (ARP), was brought into commercial use in Finland in 1971, after a couple of years of construction. Despite its low capacity by today's standards, it was useful enough to last 30 years in the commercial market. It functioned in the VHF band, which provided very large coverage areas per base station. It was thus especially useful for basic voice calls in all the regions of the country. This analog network was operated by Telecom Finland (nowadays knows as Telia Sonera Finland), and it had tens of thousands of customers in its peak years.
The first fully automatic mobile communications system, and also the most international variant of the first generation mobile communications network ...
