On Oct. 13, 1983, AT&T launched the first commercial cellular telephone service in Chicago, and I was 2 years old. It would be a while before the terms cellular or telephone would mean anything to me, let alone combined to unlock a new world of mobile communication.
Fast forward 17 years and the first commercial smartphones began emerging as traditional cellphones started reaching their limited ceilings on features and abilities.
After gobbling up the pager, payphone, home phone, car phone, and AOL instant messaging markets, the cell phone had reached the end of its evolution and entered the first of the signs of what would become deeply personal and portable computing, the smartphone.
As we know today, smartphones are cell phones that offer features such as internet access, apps, and cameras. The term “smartphone” first emerged in the late 90s, but smartphones became widely used in the late 2000s and early 2010s. The release of the iPhone in 2007 was a major milestone in the smartphone evolution, as it introduced a touch screen and a powerful processor. Smartphones have since become commonplace, with many manufacturers releasing new models annually, bi-annually, and sometimes monthly it seems.
The history of smartphones can be traced back to the early 1970s, when Motorola unveiled the world’s first cell phone prototype. It took a decade and $100 million to develop the first cell phone, which was called the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X. It weighed almost 2 pounds and had a battery life of 30 minutes. The first version of what we’d consider a smartphone was invented in 1992 by IBM. Called the Simon Personal Communicator (or just IBM Simon), it was made available for purchase in 1994 and sold by the tens of thousands. It had a touch screen, email, fax, calendar, and other features.
Since then, smartphones have evolved rapidly, with new innovations such as Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, and more. Smartphones have also become more affordable and accessible, with billions of users worldwide. Today, smartphones are not only used for communication, but also for entertainment, education, work, health, and more. Smartphones have changed the way we live, learn, and connect with each other.
Smartphones have revolutionized the way we communicate, work, learn, and play. They are more than just phones; they are powerful computers that fit in our pockets. They allow us to access the internet, take photos and videos, play games, listen to music, watch movies, and much more. Smartphones have also enabled new forms of social interaction, such as texting, video calling, and social media. Smartphones have become an essential part of our lives, connecting us with people, information, and entertainment.
Alongside its evolution smartphones have also swept up other industries and technologies into its metamorphosis that include the advent of readily available Wi-Fi, advancements in Bluetooth and Near Field Communications, as well forcing carriers to invest in advancements in connectivity.
To that end, I was able to interview AT&T’s AVP of Device Architecture and 5G guru Jason Sikes on the 40th anniversary of the carriers first commercial cellular call and were able to chat about how 5G is helping advance not only the smartphone evolution but how, after close to a decade, it’s beginning to benefit other industries.
Here is a brief history of AT&T’s 5G efforts:
- AT&T began working on 5G technology as early as 2015, conducting trials and tests in various locations.
In 2017, AT&T launched its first 5G service, but it was not for mobile devices. It was a fixed wireless 5G service that provided home internet access in select areas. - In 2018, AT&T introduced its 5G Evolution (5GE) network, which was not actually 5G, but an enhanced version of 4G LTE. The 5GE logo appeared on some AT&T phones, but it did not deliver 5G speeds or performance.
- In 2019, AT&T launched its true mobile 5G network, using low-band spectrum that offered wider coverage but slower speeds. AT&T also deployed its 5G+ network, using high-band spectrum (mmWave) that offered faster speeds but limited range. The 5G+ network was initially available only for business customers and select developers.
- In 2020, AT&T expanded its 5G and 5G+ networks to more cities and markets, reaching over 200 million people with 5G and over 35 cities with 5G+. AT&T also started offering 5G phones and plans to consumers, such as the Samsung Galaxy S20 series and the iPhone 12 series.
- In 2021, AT&T continued to improve its 5G network, adding more capacity, reliability, and security. AT&T also announced its plans to launch C-band spectrum, which is a mid-band spectrum that offers a balance of speed and coverage, by the end of the year. AT&T also partnered with various industries and organizations to highlight the potential of 5G, such as gaming, entertainment, health care, education, and sports
- Additionally, advancements like network slicing will bring 5G to its full potential by delivering services designed to fit a specific need. For example, we could offer unique network capabilities that provide specialized high-bandwidth access for doctors and healthcare professionals as they transmit medical imaging files or patient records in hospitals. We could also enable low-latency connections for data-heavy entertainment applications like cloud gaming, or safety-critical applications in autonomous vehicles and advanced robotics.
Jason Sikes: I’m the device guy, so I like that you review devices.
So, I’m in our network technology organization and my specific responsibility is in the device realm.
So essentially all of the devices that connect to our wireless network, The Sims and E Sims that those use and some of the platforms that interact directly with the devices is me and my team’s responsibility.
And then our overall organization as network CTO implies, we cover the full breadth of the wireless network, so the device, the radio network, the core transport and even out towards the edge and some of the API exposure that happens.
MSFTUnboxed: I mean, that kind of leads me into my first question is actually about how technology works in a perspective; you have these things and sometimes they can fill like appliances, so you take them for granted. You see a dishwasher and you’re like, all right, I just put my dishes in it, turn a knob and they’re cleaned later
You don’t understand all the piping, electricity and the amount of water that has to be measured out for each cycle and all that kind of stuff.
So, with that being said how does 5G work?
JS: The dishwasher example’s a good one. If we’re doing our jobs, that’s the way it should be. It should be just seamless for the user. It just works and works well.
And so, explaining 5G, we could probably spend weeks, I can imagine, right? And I wouldn’t be able to do it justice.
So, LTE is our 4G technology which continues to service very, very well and it’s still an important part of our network. From LTE we transitioned into what’s called non-stand-alone 5G. I know that kind of an alphabet soup and you I’ll probably start shifting into saying things like NSA which stands for non-stand alone.
But this non-stand-alone 5G kind of as the name implies is 5G is not standing alone. It still needs it’s still being supported by LTE.
So, it’s really using both LTE for some of the setup, some of the control and then using 5G as well as LTE for the signal.
When you’re downloading a video or streaming a movie, it’s using both networks to supply that experience.
It still relies on a non-standalone network core as defined in the specifications which doesn’t really mean a whole much but it it’s really a trend. A transitioning technology as we go from LTE into full 5G.
What is next and there’s what is happening now and that’s stand-alone 5G, and again as the name implies it is 5G truly standing alone from the radio network all the way through the core network.
It’s not using any of the LTE radio alongside 5G putting them both together to give the experience.
It’s virtualized software to find core network and in our case, we’re running on a cloud-based platform.
MU: One thing I wanted to ask is that, maybe five years ago we started hearing the rumblings of 5G and some of these like promises; not necessarily from AT&T, but from like partners that were like, oh, we’re going to do all these amazing things with 5G.
And since then, some of the partners have kind of disappeared.
With that that notion, I wanted to know if there’s anything you personally or the company has seen as far as 5G applications that have made it, that have validated the marketing push that we’re kind of sold on beyond making our phones a little bit faster and you know, getting HBO to us a little quicker?
JS: It extends to manufacturing and automotive, to where we can provide custom solutions for a particular location to ensure that we’re meeting their connectivity needs.
A notable example would be an auto manufacturer who has a large manufacturing facility. They produce a lot of cars. They have hundreds if not thousands of cars out in a large holding area that they need to do a software update on.
And you know these cars are now software driven so they need to do a software update on to where that can be. You can provide a network connectivity solution where they can, they can now do that.
They’re not having to walk out with a laptop each time to update these devices.
So, whether it’s that or its manufacturing or it’s a tractor out the field you have the ability to tune and manage the network for these specific industries which just haven’t been able to do in the past.
On the consumer side, which at least for me is always a little bit more relatable and we’ll start to see some experiences coming.
Gaming is gaming is also the usual example.
The other big area as we transition into 5G is at the other end of the scale on devices that are more IO, the lower small form factor highly power sensitive meaning they need long battery life on that end of the spectrum in the IoT realm and even on the consumer side on wearables. In the future potentially even AR glasses to wear reduced capability 5G, which is such a weird description to call it, but reduced capability 5G is a flavor of 5G targeted for these power sensitive small form factor devices that don’t need the huge throughputs.
Many prefer to have a battery that lasts for days and those type of scenarios.
And so, we’re bringing, we’re bringing that technology here very shortly as well.
MU: How much say or partnership working do you have with like device makers as far as implementing these new devices on your network?
I know we’re on the cusp of people potentially using more foldables which means using more apps at once using more data.
And I wonder if you guys have ever been caught off guard by a device and were like “oh this is really going to tax our network”.
JS: Yes, it’s a great question and perfect question for me.
So that’s, that’s my role.
So, we work incredibly closely with our device partners from Apple, Samsung, Google, Motorola all the way down into the chipsets of the Qualcomm and Mediatek and into the IoT space.
So, the collaboration that we have with them is great and we have to work hand in hand.
The, the implication of not working together closely is if they bring some new and terrific capability, but it’s not lined up with the network whether like you said potential to drive more data use than we forecasted or it just functionally doesn’t work, it doesn’t do them any good.
And likewise, with we bring something, a capability, that they’re not able to take advantage of it doesn’t do them any good.
So, we work hand in hand together years in advance of seeing a new device or a new capability to make sure that our R&D maps are aligned.
We know what the technologies are, and then we continue to iterate again multiyear process, we continue to iterate and work together. As the technology becomes real, we’ll bring it into our labs.
MU: Are you working on your next sort of set of technologies beyond 5G? Are you working on maybe 6G or are you just going to keep obviously fine tuning 5G?
JS: On that what’s coming next front 5G, my view we’re still in the early days of 5G as I mentioned now at that turning point to where we’re scaling on stand-alone which enables us to start to bring those next generation of capabilities whether it’s APIs or it’s slicing or it’s you know down to the consumer levels about having a communication experience for a eTams call with the turning point of being able to bring those.
So that’s still towards the early days of 5G and now scaling and bringing in the capabilities that 5G was expected or will promise and does promise, but there’s always something next.
So yes, 6G is the next one. No skipping generations, but 6G is definitely on the horizon.
So, you know maybe towards the beginning of the next decade you’ll start to see the early signs of 6G coming into place.
So, what that means is that 5G has some long life ahead of it.
We’ll be using 5G and expanding on the capabilities of 5G through the rest of this decade and well into the next decade.
MU: Thank you so much.
Following my interview with Jason, I was given some more context surrounding the company’s 5G plans for the future from president of AT&T Network Chris Sambar
We’re already collaborating with customers – including healthcare, manufacturing, public sector and more – to address use cases with functionalities that require critical network access.
We’re building our network differently than our competitors as we continue to innovate and expand connectivity. We’re not stopping anytime soon – 5G, fiber, and satellite are all a part of the killer app as well.
Our mid-band 5G spectrum (including C-Band) now covers more than 175 million people. We have the largest wireless network in North America, and we’re the nation’s largest fiber internet provider. And we’re continuing to accelerate our growth by building more fiber than anyone – we added more than 60 thousand miles built in 2022 and have already passed an additional 1M+ customer locations with fiber this year.
We’re collaborating with AST SpaceMobile to one day provide satellite service direct to your everyday regular smartphone. AST recently achieved the world’s first satellite voice call direct to an everyday smartphone as well as demonstrating direct-to-cell LTE data download speeds – all connected via a low-earth orbit satellite and AT&T spectrum.
Chris Sambar President – AT&T Network
40 years in and there is a lot still going on to advance communications from AT&T and it looks like users on the platform have plenty to look forward towards in the upcoming years.
