The first citywide wireless phone network in the world was built in Japan. It began its life in Tokyo in 1979,

before expanding to cover the whole of the country over the following five years. Denmark,

Finland, Norway, and Sweden were the next to get this first-generation wireless phone service

in 1981, followed by the city of Chicago

in 1983, and locations throughout the UK, Mexico, and Canada in the mid-1980s. The main

distinction between that first-generation wireless phone network and the second-generation network

that followed was the nature of the

signal that was utilized. The first was analog, and the second was digital, and that changeover

allowed the new system to become more efficient than its predecessor, and allowed for the

introduction of rudimentary data services over those wireless signals, like SMS text messages,

followed by picture messages and multimedia messages. This second-generation service, which was based

on the GSM standard, got its initial toehold in Finland in 1991, and it took off pretty

quickly, spreading out around the world

from there, as its data transfer speed, 50 kilobits per second, as a maximum theoretical ceiling,

but more like 40 kilobits per second in practice, was top notch for the technology available

at the time.

The GPRS, or General Packet Radio Service, upgrade to that standard, made this 2G data

service more consistent and reliable, and a further upgrade, sometimes called 2.75G wireless,

but more popularly known as edge, increased transfer speeds

by allowing each symbol sent wirelessly to contain three bits instead of just one.

So more info per chunk of data transmitted.

That upgrade was deployed across GSM networks beginning in 2003,

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