On April 3, 1973, on New York’s Sixth Avenue, Motorola engineer and CEO Martin Cooper called his competitor, Joel Engel of Bell Labs, to tell him, as they say, “I’m calling you just to see if my call sounds good on your end, I’m on a portable phone. That, which would surprise no one today, was the first call from a mobile phone in history and ended the race between the two companies to make it happen.
Fifty years have passed. The device used for this call was a Motorola Dynatac 8000X, which weighed almost 800 grams, measured 33 cm and took 10 hours to complete its charge, which lasted only 30 minutes. In Chile, the use and commercialization of mobile telephony began in 1989, in the midst of the transition to democracy.
Calling and receiving voice calls was the only function in its beginnings, which in the last decades has evolved in a frenetic way to uses that were unthinkable in those years. Already in the 90s, these heavy cell phones began to shrink and enter people’s pockets, lowering their costs and reaching more users.
But it was not until 2007 that Steve Jobs, with the iPhone and its touch screen, revolutionized everything with the first smartphone.
From then on, the evolution has been explosive. Data from Subtel provides for that in the year 2000, in Chile, there were 3.4 million mobile subscribers and by December 2022, the figure reached more than 26 million. Globally, meanwhile, Data Reportar provided for that 68% of the population uses mobile phones, which represents 5.44 billion people, and the figures continue to grow.
“The use and consumption of cell phones in Chile has been increasing consistently over time. Users demand devices that suit their particular needs, that are fast and that allow them to be on the Internet without problems. The companies, as well as the customers, have also been evolving and delivering a better service, in line with the times and allowing more and more people to access the infinite possibilities offered by technology”, says Entel’s assistant product manager, Ignacio Reyes.
In fact, the technology and telecommunications company explains that this evolution of mobile telephony would not have been possible without the important investments made by operators in first class network infrastructure throughout the country, although there is awareness that there is still a digital divide that needs to be addressed.
New uses and projection
Today we practically have a computer in our pocket and, therefore, the uses have changed, relegating calls to a second place. In fact, according to Subtel statistics, last year a total of 14,285,223 calls were made and a traffic of 40.7 million minutes was registered. This may seem a lot, but it is barely 2 minutes per person if divided between each Chilean man and woman, and much less if compared to the average 5 hours that users use the cell phone, where social networks concentrate the largest amount of time.
But not only that. The Internet of Things, Data Analytics, added to technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, allow us to manage household appliances from anywhere, watch series and movies at any time and know where to drive to avoid traffic.
Reality is that the use of data and the demand for digital applications and services continues to rise. An analysis by Entel pointed out that mobile data traffic increased by 33% during 2022 and has no intention of going down. And what are the apps most used by Chileans? Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Netflix and TikTok.
In this context,“The deployment of the 5G network and the irruption of this new technology will undoubtedly open up a world of opportunities and people will experience a substantial improvement, both in their user experience and in access to new devices”, said Reyes.
17 Abr, 2023
On April 3, 1973, on New York’s Sixth Avenue, Motorola engineer and CEO Martin Cooper called his competitor, Joel Engel of Bell Labs, to tell him, as they say, “I’m calling you just to see if my call sounds good on your end, I’m on a portable phone. That, which would surprise no one today, was the first call from a mobile phone in history and ended the race between the two companies to make it happen.
Fifty years have passed. The device used for this call was a Motorola Dynatac 8000X, which weighed almost 800 grams, measured 33 cm and took 10 hours to complete its charge, which lasted only 30 minutes. In Chile, the use and commercialization of mobile telephony began in 1989, in the midst of the transition to democracy.
Calling and receiving voice calls was the only function in its beginnings, which in the last decades has evolved in a frenetic way to uses that were unthinkable in those years. Already in the 90s, these heavy cell phones began to shrink and enter people’s pockets, lowering their costs and reaching more users.
But it was not until 2007 that Steve Jobs, with the iPhone and its touch screen, revolutionized everything with the first smartphone.
From then on, the evolution has been explosive. Data from Subtel provides for that in the year 2000, in Chile, there were 3.4 million mobile subscribers and by December 2022, the figure reached more than 26 million. Globally, meanwhile, Data Reportar provided for that 68% of the population uses mobile phones, which represents 5.44 billion people, and the figures continue to grow.
“The use and consumption of cell phones in Chile has been increasing consistently over time. Users demand devices that suit their particular needs, that are fast and that allow them to be on the Internet without problems. The companies, as well as the customers, have also been evolving and delivering a better service, in line with the times and allowing more and more people to access the infinite possibilities offered by technology”, says Entel’s assistant product manager, Ignacio Reyes.
In fact, the technology and telecommunications company explains that this evolution of mobile telephony would not have been possible without the important investments made by operators in first class network infrastructure throughout the country, although there is awareness that there is still a digital divide that needs to be addressed.
New uses and projection
Today we practically have a computer in our pocket and, therefore, the uses have changed, relegating calls to a second place. In fact, according to Subtel statistics, last year a total of 14,285,223 calls were made and a traffic of 40.7 million minutes was registered. This may seem a lot, but it is barely 2 minutes per person if divided between each Chilean man and woman, and much less if compared to the average 5 hours that users use the cell phone, where social networks concentrate the largest amount of time.
But not only that. The Internet of Things, Data Analytics, added to technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, allow us to manage household appliances from anywhere, watch series and movies at any time and know where to drive to avoid traffic.
Reality is that the use of data and the demand for digital applications and services continues to rise. An analysis by Entel pointed out that mobile data traffic increased by 33% during 2022 and has no intention of going down. And what are the apps most used by Chileans? Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Netflix and TikTok.
In this context,“The deployment of the 5G network and the irruption of this new technology will undoubtedly open up a world of opportunities and people will experience a substantial improvement, both in their user experience and in access to new devices”, said Reyes.
On April 3, 1973, on New York’s Sixth Avenue, Motorola engineer and CEO Martin Cooper called his competitor, Joel Engel of Bell Labs, to tell him, as they say, “I’m calling you just to see if my call sounds good on your end, I’m on a portable phone. That, which would surprise no one today, was the first call from a mobile phone in history and ended the race between the two companies to make it happen.
Fifty years have passed. The device used for this call was a Motorola Dynatac 8000X, which weighed almost 800 grams, measured 33 cm and took 10 hours to complete its charge, which lasted only 30 minutes. In Chile, the use and commercialization of mobile telephony began in 1989, in the midst of the transition to democracy.
Calling and receiving voice calls was the only function in its beginnings, which in the last decades has evolved in a frenetic way to uses that were unthinkable in those years. Already in the 90s, these heavy cell phones began to shrink and enter people’s pockets, lowering their costs and reaching more users.
But it was not until 2007 that Steve Jobs, with the iPhone and its touch screen, revolutionized everything with the first smartphone.
From then on, the evolution has been explosive. Data from Subtel provides for that in the year 2000, in Chile, there were 3.4 million mobile subscribers and by December 2022, the figure reached more than 26 million. Globally, meanwhile, Data Reportar provided for that 68% of the population uses mobile phones, which represents 5.44 billion people, and the figures continue to grow.
“The use and consumption of cell phones in Chile has been increasing consistently over time. Users demand devices that suit their particular needs, that are fast and that allow them to be on the Internet without problems. The companies, as well as the customers, have also been evolving and delivering a better service, in line with the times and allowing more and more people to access the infinite possibilities offered by technology”, says Entel’s assistant product manager, Ignacio Reyes.
In fact, the technology and telecommunications company explains that this evolution of mobile telephony would not have been possible without the important investments made by operators in first class network infrastructure throughout the country, although there is awareness that there is still a digital divide that needs to be addressed.
New uses and projection
Today we practically have a computer in our pocket and, therefore, the uses have changed, relegating calls to a second place. In fact, according to Subtel statistics, last year a total of 14,285,223 calls were made and a traffic of 40.7 million minutes was registered. This may seem a lot, but it is barely 2 minutes per person if divided between each Chilean man and woman, and much less if compared to the average 5 hours that users use the cell phone, where social networks concentrate the largest amount of time.
But not only that. The Internet of Things, Data Analytics, added to technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, allow us to manage household appliances from anywhere, watch series and movies at any time and know where to drive to avoid traffic.
Reality is that the use of data and the demand for digital applications and services continues to rise. An analysis by Entel pointed out that mobile data traffic increased by 33% during 2022 and has no intention of going down. And what are the apps most used by Chileans? Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Netflix and TikTok.
In this context,“The deployment of the 5G network and the irruption of this new technology will undoubtedly open up a world of opportunities and people will experience a substantial improvement, both in their user experience and in access to new devices”, said Reyes.