The first step into mobility was taken thirty years ago. NMT, Nordic Mobile Telephony, was the first generation of mobile telephony and by today’s standards, the bulky telephones are humorous – little did we know then, it was the start of the revolution enabling global mobility.
NMT launched in 1981. In Sweden, the NMT network was shut down on the last day of 2007. The prefix "010" that signified the mobile network is now used as a prefix for corporate exchanges – Ericsson among them.
Televerket, which later became TeliaSonera, was an especially strong advocate of the technology. Ericsson, as a main supplier, was driven to support its customer. Today, the two are still pioneers, being first in the world to launch a commercial 4G network and developing the vision of the Networked Society.
Håkan Dahlström, President of Mobility Services, TeliaSonera, says: "The Nordic NMT-system was groundbreaking, as it provided people in the Nordic countries a totally new possibility of mobile communication."
"The standard we built it on paved the way for GSM and modern mobile communication technology, which now serves a community of more than 5 billion users worldwide. It is a remarkable achievement that no one could ever dream of. And customer demand for communication continues to explode."
Johan Wibergh, head of Ericsson’s Business Unit Networks, says: "The evolution since then has been dramatic. Today, mobile communication is so much more for so many more people. It is an essential part of our daily life, all over the world."
"Our vision of a Networked Society is where people, business and society benefit from using more than 50 billion connected devices. Back in 1981, this was unthinkable. Now it’s close to happening and it’s incredibly exciting," concluded Wibergh.
An interactive site contains more information, including a press kit, at nmt30years.com.
