• Tools:
• Save |
• Print |
• E-mail |
• Most Popular |

The day in numbers: 50

Adjust font size:

(CNN) -- 50 years: A conference in Stockholm today celebrates the 50th anniversary of the world's first mobile telephone system. In 1956 the telecommunications company Ericsson created the pioneering mobile network called "Mobile Telephony A " (MTA) in the Swedish capital.

40 kgs: The weight of the MTA radio equipment, which was designed to be installed in the trunk of a car.

1973: The year Motorola employee Martin Cooper placed the first mobile phone call using a handheld protoype. Cooper called a rival at AT&T's Bell Labs.

1981: The year Ericsson launched the world's first modern mobile network, called Nordic Mobile Telephony.

1991: The year the GSM pan-European standard network was introduced.

2001: The year 3G was introduced, offering mobile broadband services of up to 3.6 megabytes per second.

2.5 billion: The number of people in the world now estimated to own a mobile phone.

80: The percentage of the world's population with mobile coverage.

111: The number of mobile phone subscribers per 100 people in Taiwan, which has the heaviest mobile phone use in the world.

Get up-to-the minute news from CNN CNN.com gives you the latest stories and video from the around the world, with in-depth coverage of U.S. news, politics, entertainment, health, crime, tech and more.

---

• Sniper John Allen Muhammad executed
• Little dress makes big trouble in Brazil
• German World Cup hopeful dead
• Chinese credit card debt mounts
• Obama to seek stronger relations on Asia trip

• Irish PM to quit over payments scandal
• NATO chief: Afghan troop increase likely
• Militants hunted as calm retuns to Basra
• Pressure on Bush to skip Olympics
• BA sending misplaced T5 baggage to Milan

• Recruiting suicide bombers (2:50)
• London was lucky (2:36)
• Cars in London rigged as bombs (3:48)
• Second explosives-packed car foun (2:32)
• Soviet culture returns (3:47)