Editing History of the Internet (section)

==Mobile telephone data traffic==
{{See also|Mobile web}}

Total global mobile data traffic reached 588 exabytes during 2020,<ref name="ReferenceA">Mobile Data Traffic Outlook. Ericsson</ref> a 150-fold increase from 3.86 exabytes/year in 2010.<ref>Statista "Global Mobile Traffic per year from 2010–2020</ref> Most recently, smartphones accounted for 95% of this mobile data traffic with video accounting for 66% by type of data.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> Mobile traffic travels by radio frequency to the closest cell phone tower and its base station where the radio signal is converted into an optical signal that is transmitted over high-capacity optical networking systems that convey the information to data centers. The optical backbones enable much of this traffic as well as a host of emerging mobile services including the Internet of things, 3-D virtual reality, gaming and autonomous vehicles. The most popular mobile phone application is texting, of which 2.1 trillion messages were logged in 2020.<ref>CTIA 2020 Annual Survey</ref> The texting phenomenon began on December 3, 1992, when Neil Papworth sent the first text message of "Merry Christmas" over a commercial cell phone network to the CEO of Vodafone.<ref>{{cite magazine| last=Eveleth | first=Rose | author-link=Rose Eveleth | title=The First Text Message, Sent Twenty Years Ago, Was 'Merry Christmas' | magazine=Smithsonian Magazine | date=5 December 2012 | url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-first-text-message-sent-twenty-years-ago-was-merry-christmas-152311567/}}</ref>

The first mobile phone with Internet connectivity was the [[Nokia 9000 Communicator]], launched in Finland in 1996. The viability of Internet services access on mobile phones was limited until prices came down from that model, and network providers started to develop systems and services conveniently accessible on phones. [[NTT DoCoMo]] in Japan launched the first mobile Internet service, [[i-mode]], in 1999 and this is considered the birth of the mobile phone Internet services. In 2001, the mobile phone email system by Research in Motion (now [[BlackBerry Limited]]) for their [[BlackBerry]] product was launched in America. To make efficient use of the small screen and [[Telephone keypad|tiny keypad]] and one-handed operation typical of mobile phones, a specific document and networking model was created for mobile devices, the [[Wireless Application Protocol]] (WAP). Most mobile device Internet services operate using WAP. The growth of mobile phone services was initially a primarily Asian phenomenon with Japan, South Korea and Taiwan all soon finding the majority of their Internet users accessing resources by phone rather than by PC.<ref>{{cite report | title=ANALYSIS: Mobile internet usage challenges in Asia — awareness, literacy and local content | website=gsma.com | date=15 July 2015 | url=https://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/150709-asia-local-content-final.pdf | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151018175353/https://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/150709-asia-local-content-final.pdf | archive-date=October 18, 2015  | pages=8–9 | access-date=December 11, 2021 }}</ref> Developing countries followed, with India, South Africa, Kenya, the Philippines, and Pakistan all reporting that the majority of their domestic users accessed the Internet from a mobile phone rather than a PC. The European and North American use of the Internet was influenced by a large installed base of personal computers, and the growth of mobile phone Internet access was more gradual, but had reached national penetration levels of 20–30% in most Western countries.<ref name="DasguptaLall2001">{{cite book|author1=Susmita Dasgupta|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4v-04WJ4UBEC|title=Policy Reform, Economic Growth, and the Digital Divide: An Econometric Analysis|author2=Somik V. Lall|author3=David Wheeler|publisher=World Bank Publications|year=2001|pages=1–3|id=GGKEY:YLS5GEUEBAR|access-date=11 February 2013}}</ref> The cross-over occurred in 2008, when more Internet access devices were mobile phones than personal computers. In many parts of the developing world, the ratio is as much as 10 mobile phone users to one PC user.<ref>{{cite book|last=Hillebrand|first=Friedhelm|title=GSM and UMTS, The Creation of Global Mobile Communications|publisher=John Wiley & Sons|year=2002|isbn=978-0-470-84322-2|editor-last=Hillebrand|editor-first=Friedhelm}}</ref>