The technology of cellular telephony or cellular telecommunications has had a widespread use since the beginning of the eighties. Since its first presentation its use has increased very rapidly to the extent that a large part of the world's population has access to technology. From developed countries to growing nations, mobile or cellular telephony technology has been installed in every country in the world. .
The cellular telecommunications industry has been an important driver in the growth of the radio and electronics industries. Although cellular communications are now accepted in everyday life, its development took many years. Although the basic concepts for cellular communications technology were proposed in the 1940s, it was not until the mid-1980s that technology and radio systems were implemented to allow wide availability.
The use of cellular communication systems grew rapidly and, as an example, it was estimated that in the United Kingdom more calls were made with mobile phones than with wired devices in 2011.
Another example of the growth of cellular telecommunications systems occurred in 2004 when the GSMA announced at the Mobile World Congress in February 2004 that there were more than one billion mobile GSM subscribers: 12 years had passed since the first network was launched. In comparison, it took more than 100 years to reach the same figure for cable telephone connections.
Then, by 2015, more than 7 billion mobile subscriptions (for all technologies) were active. This is a great feat when it is understood that the world population was just over 7 billion. This meant that many people had more than one subscription, although market penetration was obviously very significant.