Since the eighties, the mobile phone has changed from an expensive item used solely by business types to a very popular personal communications device that's used by much of the population. In fact, these days, mobile phones outnumber land-line telephones in many countries.

Mobile phones started life when a number of mobile radio users decided it was time to make mobile phone technology popular. Mobile telephones were originally installed in vehicles permanently, but later versions of them, which were named transportables, could also be carried, which meant that they could be used as a mobile or as moveable two way radio.

The first generation of mobile telephones are often dubbed 1G. These mobile telephones are the analogue items that were introduced in the 1980s & continued until they were replaced by 2G mobile telephones, which ran on digital networks. Indeed, even though 1G & 2G systems use digital signals to link the radio towers to the rest of the telephone network, the voice itself during a phone call encoded to digital signalling in 2G whereas voices on 1G telephones aren't.

The earliest second generation mobile telephones were commercially launched in Finland in 1991. While 2G networks were totally digital, the earlier 1G networks were analogue. One of the main benefits that 2G networks had over their 1-G predecessors was that telephone conversations were digitally encrypted. This was significant because third parties could to eavesdrop on calls on analogue networks. As well as this, 2G systems were significantly more efficient, which allowed far more mobile telephones to be used. Finally, 2G introduced data services for mobile, including SMS messages.

After 2G mobile phones were launched, the previous mobile phone systems were named 1-G. whereas radio signalling on 1-G networks are analogue, & on 2G networks they're digital, both systems use digital signals to link the radio towers & the rest of the telephone network.

The first pre-commercial 3-G mobile phone network was launched in Japan in May 2001. 3-G was later released commercially in Japan on 1st October 2001.

3-G is the third generation of mobile phone standards & technology, which is the successor to 2G technologies. The birth of 3-G technologies enabled network operators including Orange to give their users a larger range of more advanced services. This includes broadband wireless internet, as well as high-tech video calls.

Although 3G has been very successful, there's also been a number of complaints about it. These include criticism over the expense of 3-G phones, as well as a lack of network coverage because it is still a pretty new service and complaints about the amount of power that 3G mobile phones have to use.