Browsing through time: the history of mobile internet

Facebook, Instagram, work emails. YouTube, Netflix, remote control of a smart home. And also abbreviations such as 3G, 4G or LTE. What comes to mind when you say "internet on the phone"? In today's article let us look back at its history and reminisce about the good old WAP on the monochrome displays of button phones.

The prehistoric nineties

In the second half of the 1990s – specifically before 1997 – the first internet technologies for mobile phones appeared: CSD (Circuit Switched Data) and HSCSD (High Speed Circuit Switched Data). They offered a "mind-blowing" speed of just under 10 kbps, and in our region this connection was provided by Eurotel, as it was then. The year 1997 then brought humanity GPRS (General Packet Radio Service). It could be used in several classes, divided according to whether it allowed voice and data transfer, or only one of them. GPRS offered a transfer speed (down/up) of 80/40 kbps. In its early days, mobile internet was charged by time. In 2002, Eurotel offered three data packages (WAP, DATA and DATA SET III). The monthly fee for the DATA package was then CZK 195, while DATA Set II cost CZK 595, with activation at an incredible CZK 5,000. For internet access, customers with the WAP programme paid CZK 6, and access to WAP cost CZK 2.70 per minute. Many phones of the time had a physical button for connecting to the internet – pressing it by accident was literally a nightmare for many users.

You may also want to read what the history of the internet in the Czech Republic actually is in our article The History of the Internet in the Czech Republic: From Eccentrics to the World of Networks 

WAP for everyone, EDGE for the chosen few

1998 was the year the WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) arrived. It was developed by the WAP Forum, and its aim was to give simpler mobile phones access to the internet. Many mobile phones of the time, in the lower and sometimes even the middle range, had too little memory, processor power or even screen resolution to cope with the "more demanding" internet. These were precisely the phones for which stripped-down, very simplified versions of full websites were designed. Often these were just text; over time, simple images were added too. Some of you may remember the popular (and relatively expensive) downloads of logos and ringtones for Nokia and other phones via WAP portals.

More demanding users could use the EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) protocol on their phones. As the name suggests, this technology offered several significant improvements for data transfer. EDGE speeds reached up to 200 kbps for downlink and 100 kbps for uplink. By 2001, EDGE was already available at all BTS of O2 and T-Mobile and at most BTS of the operator Vodafone.

The world of the internet, now with LTE

LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology enables high-speed internet connections in mobile networks. The speed of this technology, formally part of the 3G standard, in practice reaches around 14 Mbps, which is a huge advantage for users, especially when downloading. The successor to the original LTE is LTE-Advanced. It began to spread in our region mainly from 2014 and finally met the requirements of the 4G standard. Its theoretical speed is up to 1.5 Gbps, and it also has significantly lower latency (60 ms instead of 120 ms). Voice is carried by VoLTE technology, which can also be used for video calls. With the arrival of 4G, the possibilities for using the internet on a phone expanded considerably, and watching multimedia content or playing online games stopped being a sci-fi dream.

TIP: Do you like flying? Read our article Internet in the clouds :)

The future written in the 5G stars

Despite the fact that full LTE network coverage is not yet available in our region, the next technology of the future, 5G, is being developed. Its aim is to bring a significant acceleration of data transfer (up to 10 Gbps) with latency of up to 1 ms. 5G's potential uses lie more in industry and technology than for ordinary users. The first 5G transmitters in Europe were successfully tested in October last year. In our country, T-Mobile tested the technology in early 2018, and Vodafone joined in the summer. In practice, 5G was used, for example, at the Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang. The rollout of 5G could begin as early as the end of 2018, but the Czech Republic will still have to wait a little for this high-tech novelty: the Czech Telecommunication Office (CTU) plans for the relevant networks to launch in 2020, and commercial operation is expected to start in 2022.

Updated 5 March 2024