Russian mobile communication system "Altai". Altai (Mountain System) Communication "Altai" in various cities

The world's first fully automatic system mobile communications was created and put into operation in the Soviet Union. And for several years the USSR was the world leader in the field of mobile communications.
"Altai". The first in the world.
Many people know Voronezh as the birthplace of the cartoon kitten from Lizyukov Street. But this city is famous not only for patriotic kittens and smart crows. It was here, in the Voronezh Research Institute of Communications (VNIIS), that the Soviet mobile phone was created.
Work on the automatic mobile communication system, called "Altai", began in 1958. In the city of Voronezh, in the Voronezh Research Institute of Communications (VNIIS), subscriber stations (in other words, telephones themselves) and base stations for communication with them were created. Antenna systems were developed at the Moscow State Specialized Design Institute (GSPI), the same place where Soviet television was born. Leningraders worked on other components of Altai, and later enterprises from Belarus and Moldova joined. Specialists from different parts of the Soviet Union joined forces to create an absolutely unique product at that time - automatic mobile communication.
"Altai" was supposed to become a full-fledged telephone installed in a car. It was simply possible to speak on it, as on a regular phone (that is, the sound passed in both directions at the same time, the so-called duplex mode). To call another "Altai" or a regular phone, it was enough just to dial the number - as on a desktop telephone, without any channel switching or talking with the dispatcher.
Realizing this possibility at the then technical level was not easy. There was, of course, no digital communication yet; the voice was transmitted over the air in the usual way. But, in addition to voice, it was necessary to transmit special signals, with the help of which the system itself could find a free radio channel, establish a connection, transmit a dialed telephone number, etc.
It now seems natural to us to simply dial a number on the buttons of a mobile phone. And in 1963, when the experimental zone of the Altai system was launched in Moscow, a real telephone in a car made an indelible impression. The developers tried to make it as similar as possible to the usual devices: Altai had a handset, and in some models even a dialing dial. However, the disk was soon abandoned and replaced with buttons, since it turned out to be inconvenient to turn the disk in a car.

"Altai". Phone 60s.
Party and economic leaders were delighted with the new system. Car phones soon appeared in the ZILs and Chaikas of the upper echelons of the Soviet leadership. They were followed by "Volga" directors of the most important enterprises.
"Altai" of course was not a full-fledged cellular system. Initially, one city, together with the suburbs, was served by only one base station with sixteen radio channels. But for a small number of senior leaders who had access to mobile communications, this was enough at first.
The system used a frequency range of 150 MHz - these are frequencies of the same order as the meter range of television. Therefore, an antenna mounted on a high tower made it possible to provide communication at a distance of up to tens of kilometers.
A similar system in the US, IMTS (Improved Mobile Telephone Service), was launched in the pilot area a year later. And its commercial launch took place only in 1969. Meanwhile, in the USSR, by 1970, "Altai" was installed and successfully operated in about 30 cities!
By the way, about the IMTS system. There is one very interesting paragraph in the description of this system.
In the 70s and the early 80s, before the introduction of cellular phones, there were "waiting lists" of up to 3 years for those wishing to have mobile telephone service. These potential subscribers were literally waiting for other subscribers to disconnect their subscription in order to obtain a mobile telephone number and mobile phone service.
Translation:
In the 70s and early 80s before use cellular communication there were "waiting lists", up to 3 years, for those wishing to have a mobile connection. Potential subscribers were forced to wait until existing subscribers disconnected from the network in order to receive a telephone number and mobile network services.
Of course, such severe restrictions were caused by a limited number of radio channels. But I specifically draw attention to this so that readers understand that such systems could not be mass-produced purely for technical reasons, and not because of someone's malicious intent.
For this reason, the phones of this system were very expensive (from 2 to 4 thousand dollars) and a minute of conversation cost from 70 cents to 1.2 dollars. Often the phones were rented from the company rather than bought.

IMTS telephone. Early 70s.
And by the way, this system is still in operation in Canada and the United States.
Now in Moscow, Leningrad, Tashkent, Rostov, Kyiv, Voronezh and many other cities (and regions) of the USSR, party and economic leaders could easily talk on the phone from the car. Our country, strange as it may seem to hear now, was confidently leading in the field of mobile communications.
In the 1970s, the Altai system was actively developed. New radio channels were allocated (22 "trunks" of 8 channels each) in the 330 MHz band - i.e. at slightly longer wavelengths than decimeter television, which made it possible to provide a considerable range and simultaneously serve more subscribers. Thanks to the use of the first microcircuits, subscriber stations became more and more compact - although they still remained automobile (it was possible to carry the phone along with the batteries in a heavy suitcase).
By the mid-70s, the geography of the Altai system gradually expanded to 114 cities of the Soviet Union.
Special work on the modernization of equipment had to be carried out for the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Moreover, it was for the Olympics that the Altai base station moved to the Ostankino TV tower. Prior to that, she took two upper floors high-rise building on Kotelnicheskaya embankment.

The famous building on Kotelnicheskaya embankment. The top three floors in the 60s were occupied by the Altai system equipment, which provides the Central Committee and the Supreme Council with excellent mobile communications.
At the Olympics-80, the communication of the modernized Altai-3M system was used very widely and showed its best side. So, almost all journalistic reports from the competitions passed through Altai. Soviet signalmen became the winners of the Olympics along with Soviet athletes; True, they did not get Olympic medals, but many leading developers received the USSR State Prize.

Mobile phone "Altai-3M" of the 1980s - the star of the Moscow Olympics-80
However, during the Olympics, the limitations of Altai began to appear. Sometimes journalists complained about poor communication; the engineers advised them to rearrange the car a little, and everything immediately got better.
In total, by the beginning of the 80s, the number of subscribers of the Altai system was about 25 thousand.
In order for the wireless telephone to become widespread, further development of the system was required - in particular, the transition to the now familiar use of many base stations covering neighboring areas of the territory. And Soviet engineers were quite ready for this development. Unfortunately, not everything depended only on this readiness ...
Detained "Volemot"
In the early 1980s, specialists from VNIIS and other enterprises were ready to work on a new generation communication system. It was named "Volemot" (short for the names of the cities where the developers were located: Voronezh, Leningrad, Molodechno, Ternopil). A feature of "Volemot" was the ability to fully use many base stations; during a conversation, it was possible to switch from one of them to another without losing connection.
This feature, now known as "handover" and allowing conversations on the move without any problems, made Volemot a full-fledged cellular communication. In addition, automatic roaming was supported: the Volemot device, registered in the network of one city, could be used in another. At the same time, the same 330 MHz band was used, and each base station could, if necessary, “cover” tens of square kilometers with communications.
Volemot" could become a mass connection for the countryside, a "true friend" of collective farmers, summer residents and tourists. For this purpose, it would have been better suited than the Western cellular systems developed during the same period (AMPS, NMT), since it was easy to operate over a very wide area. But to serve many subscribers in a small area (in the city), Volemot was inferior to AMPS and NMT, however, further development, however, could solve this problem.
Mobile communications could well fit into the Soviet way of life, and into the communist ideology. Initially, telephones could, for example, be installed in villages and summer cottages for collective use and rented out in tourist clubs (for the duration of a trip). Call service from "Volemot" could appear in long-distance trains or buses. And, of course, there was no threat to "state security" - it is very easy to eavesdrop on mobile communications without encryption devices. Therefore, in the future it could well become available to all citizens of the country.
However, for several years, the Volemot project failed to obtain the necessary funding and the development of the system was very slow. Meanwhile, cellular systems in the West were actively developing and gaining popularity. For the beginning - the middle of the 1980s, the former leadership was lost.
"Volemot" was nevertheless completed by the end of the 1980s and was ready to start deployment, but at that time "the process had already begun" and there was no longer any talk of the possibility of catching up with Europe and the United States.
Don't wait!
Networks "Volemot" and "Altai" still exist in many cities of Russia. True, "Altai" is usually modernized - with domestic or imported equipment - but at the same time, communication is still offered under the usual brand. Usually these networks are known as "trunked" (or "trunking").
Their main positioning is professional communications for various services, from taxis to ambulances. In such cases, despite the improvement and reduction in the cost of cellular communications, the trunk is still profitable and convenient.
In addition, in some regions and in some periods - in the mid-1990s, and then in 1999-2001 - businessmen and ordinary citizens also actively acquired Altai and Volemoty.
In the mid-1990s, mobile communications became commonplace, but not everyone could afford "cellular phones", and they did not work very well in those days; therefore, many commercial firms equipped their cars with Volemotes, and sometimes bought them as home phones. But by the end of the 1990s, ordinary mobile phones, primarily GSM, became somewhat more reliable and, most importantly, very fashionable; the phone was supposed to be on the belt, not in the car. Therefore, many abandoned the old "Altaev" and "Volemotov" in favor of brand new small pipes.
History repeated itself at the turn of the century. After the 1998 crisis, communications prices began to decline rapidly, and the purchase mobile phone turned out to be real for not too rich people. Yet the conversations were still expensive. Meanwhile, the trunk networks were upgraded; even imported wearable handsets appeared (albeit more bulky than cellular ones). In many regions "Altai" began to offer unlimited tariffs, which cellular operators have not thought about it yet - and customers appreciated it. True, after 2002, when the “big three” GSM operators began to actively cover the regions, cellular communications improved significantly and became cheaper; some of Altai's thrifty customers bought regular pipes.
Nevertheless, Altai is still alive today: in some cities it is quite possible to connect to the Altai or Volemot network, and there are areas in which such a connection works most stably.
For example, Viktor Nikolaevich Pimenov, General Director of the Samara Trunking Network, told us that the Volemot network in the Samara region is actively developing and connecting new customers. Moreover, new domestic equipment is mainly used - such as Lesko switches (Moscow) and Signal-405 radio stations (Novosibirsk). "Unlimited" in the Samara "Volemot" costs only 300 rubles, so many people buy domestic landline mobile phones as home phones, especially in rural areas and summer cottages.
But "Altai" and "Volemot" could develop into full-fledged mass cellular networks and be the main ones in the country! But ... history does not know the subjunctive mood, which, however, does not prevent us from learning its many twists and turns.
Besides, by learning from the mistakes of the past, you can at least try not to repeat them, right?
Vladimir Mikhailovich Kuzmin is one of the leading developers of the Altai-3M system.
Chief Designer VNIIS.
Laureate of the State Prize.

By chance, to a technical-personal SURVEY regarding the purchase of a new smartphone (here:) I came across an old (2009) comrade record regarding the issue of mobile communications in the USSR / Russia. Naturally, I immediately remembered "Altai" (I was in the car with several friends in the 80s-early 90s), but the history of the issue is more extensive:

Original taken from grey_croco Q Did the USSR have mobile communications?

Such a question may seem strange to many, especially from a generation for which mobile communications are strongly associated with a plastic box with a large color screen, a bunch of buttons and buzzwords such as GPRS, WAP, 3G. Where in the Cursed Scoop (c) could mobile communications come from?

Well, firstly, what is a mobile connection? What is the definition of this term?

Mobile communication is a radio communication between subscribers, the location of one or more of which changes.

Mobile communication is cellular, trunking, satellite, plus paging systems and zonal SMRS (fixed channel through a repeater).

In other words, cellular communications (although this term is probably not familiar to all users of this very type of communication) is just a variation of a broader concept - mobile communications. Moreover, it appeared much later than the first mobile radio systems in general.

In the world, the first mobile communication systems appeared after the First World War. So in 1921, the first radio-equipped police cars began to be used in the United States. But mobile communications of that time were almost completely used in highly specific forms, primarily military, police and all kinds of specialized services. They did not have access to public telephone networks, they were not automatic, so this period can be skipped.

The first mobile communication systems for the average consumer began to appear after the Second World War. However, these were also rather limited systems in terms of capabilities. The connection was one-way (simplex), that is, in the image of military radio stations - you pressed the PTT - you speak, let go - you listen. And the choice of a free radio channel with subsequent connection to the landline telephone network was completely manual. The presence of a control room with telephone ladies and a manual switchboard was an indispensable attribute of such systems.

Those who remember the French film of the 60s "Razin" can remember the episode when the hero of Louis de Funes spoke on such a "mobile phone" from his car. "Hello, young lady, give Smolny!".

From this follows a simple conclusion. The process of calling from a mobile phone should be indistinguishable from a call from a regular phone. This is what will be the criterion for a mobile communication network for widespread use.

So, the world's first fully automatic mobile communication system was created and put into operation in the Soviet Union. And for several years the USSR was the world leader in the field of mobile communications.

"Altai". The first in the world.

Work on an automatic mobile communication system called "Altai" began in 1958. In the city of Voronezh, in the Voronezh Research Institute of Communications (VNIIS), subscriber stations (in other words, telephones themselves) and base stations for communication with them were created. Antenna systems were developed at the Moscow State Specialized Design Institute (GSPI), the same place where Soviet television was born. Leningraders worked on other components of Altai, and later enterprises from Belarus and Moldova joined. Specialists from different parts of the Soviet Union joined forces to create an absolutely unique product at that time - automatic mobile communication.

"Altai" was supposed to become a full-fledged telephone installed in a car. It was simply possible to speak on it, as on a regular phone (that is, the sound passed in both directions at the same time, the so-called duplex mode). To call another "Altai" or a regular phone, it was enough just to dial the number - as on a desktop telephone, without any channel switching or talking with the dispatcher.

Realizing this possibility at the then technical level was not easy. There was, of course, no digital communication yet; the voice was transmitted over the air in the usual way. But, in addition to voice, it was necessary to transmit special signals, with the help of which the system itself could find a free radio channel, establish a connection, transmit a dialed telephone number, etc.

It now seems natural to us to simply dial a number on the buttons of a mobile phone. And in 1963, when the experimental zone of the Altai system was launched in Moscow, a real telephone in a car made an indelible impression. The developers tried to make it as similar as possible to the usual devices: Altai had a handset, and in some models even a dialing dial. However, the disk was soon abandoned and replaced with buttons, since it turned out to be inconvenient to turn the disk in a car.

"Altai". Phone 60s.

Party and economic leaders were delighted with the new system. Car telephones soon appeared in the ZILs and Chaikas of the upper echelons of the Soviet leadership. They were followed by "Volga" directors of the most important enterprises.

"Altai" of course was not a full-fledged cellular system. Initially, one city, together with the suburbs, was served by only one base station with sixteen radio channels. But for a small number of senior leaders who had access to mobile communications, this was enough at first.

The system used a frequency range of 150 MHz - these are frequencies of the same order as the meter range of television. Therefore, an antenna mounted on a high tower made it possible to provide communication at a distance of up to tens of kilometers.

A similar system in the US, IMTS (Improved Mobile Telephone Service), was launched in the pilot area a year later. And its commercial launch took place only in 1969. Meanwhile, in the USSR, by 1970, "Altai" was installed and successfully operated in about 30 cities!

By the way, about the IMTS system. There is one very interesting paragraph in the description of this system.

In the 70s and the early 80s, before the introduction of cellular phones, there were "waiting lists" of up to 3 years for those wishing to have mobile telephone service. These potential subscribers were literally waiting for other subscribers to disconnect their subscription in order to obtain a mobile telephone number and mobile phone service.

I translate:

In the 70s and early 80s, before the use of cellular communications, there were "waiting lists", up to 3 years, for those who wanted to have a mobile connection. Potential subscribers were forced to wait until existing subscribers disconnected from the network in order to receive a telephone number and mobile network services.

Queues! Lists! Numbers! Here it is, the Cursed Scoop (c)!!!

Of course, such severe restrictions were caused by a limited number of radio channels. But I specifically draw attention to this so that readers understand that such systems could not be mass-produced purely for technical reasons, and not because of someone's malicious intent.

For this reason, the phones of this system were very expensive (from 2 to 4 thousand dollars) and a minute of conversation cost from 70 cents to 1.2 dollars. Often the phones were rented from the company rather than bought.

And by the way, this system is still in operation in Canada and the United States.

Now in Moscow, Leningrad, Tashkent, Rostov, Kyiv, Voronezh and many other cities (and regions) of the USSR, party and economic leaders could easily talk on the phone from the car. Our country, strange as it may seem to hear now, was confidently leading in the field of mobile communications.

In the 1970s, the Altai system was actively developed. New radio channels were allocated (22 "trunks" of 8 channels each) in the 330 MHz band - i.e. at slightly longer wavelengths than decimeter television, which made it possible to provide a considerable range and simultaneously serve more subscribers. Thanks to the use of the first microcircuits, subscriber stations became more and more compact - although they still remained automobile (it was possible to carry the phone along with the batteries in a heavy suitcase).

By the mid-70s, the geography of the Altai system gradually expanded to 114 cities of the Soviet Union.

Special work on the modernization of equipment had to be carried out for the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Moreover, it was for the Olympics that the base station "Altai" moved to the Ostankino television tower. Prior to that, she occupied the top two floors of a high-rise building on Kotelnicheskaya embankment.

At the Olympics-80, the communication of the modernized Altai-3M system was used very widely and showed its best side. So, almost all journalistic reports from the competitions passed through Altai. Soviet signalmen became the winners of the Olympics along with Soviet athletes; True, they did not get Olympic medals, but many leading developers received the USSR State Prize.

"Altai 3M". Late 70s - 80s.

However, during the Olympics, the limitations of Altai began to appear. Sometimes journalists complained about poor communication; the engineers advised them to rearrange the car a little, and everything immediately got better.

In total, by the beginning of the 80s, the number of subscribers of the Altai system was about 25 thousand.

In order for the wireless telephone to become widespread, further development of the system was required - in particular, the transition to the now familiar use of many base stations covering neighboring areas of the territory. And Soviet engineers were quite ready for this development. Unfortunately, not everything depended only on this readiness.

A VOLEMOT that came too late.

In the early 1980s, specialists from VNIIS and other enterprises were ready to work on a new generation communication system. It was named "Volemot" (short for the names of the cities where the developers were located: Voronezh, Leningrad, Molodechno, Ternopil). A feature of "Volemot" was the ability to fully use many base stations; during a conversation, it was possible to switch from one of them to another without losing connection.

This feature, now known as "handover" and allowing you to carry on conversations on the move without any problems, made "Volemot" a full-fledged cellular communication. In addition, automatic roaming was supported: the Volemot device, registered in the network of one city, could be used in another. In this case, the same 330 MHz band was used, and each base station could, if necessary, "cover" tens of square kilometers with communications.

Volemot" could become a mass connection for the countryside, a "true friend" of collective farmers, summer residents and tourists. For this purpose, it would have been better suited than the Western cellular systems developed during the same period (AMPS, NMT), since it was easy to operate over a very wide area. But to serve many subscribers in a small area (in the city), Volemot was inferior to AMPS and NMT, however, further development, however, could solve this problem.

Mobile communications could well fit into the Soviet way of life, and into the communist ideology. Initially, telephones could, for example, be installed in villages and summer cottages for collective use and rented out in tourist clubs (for the duration of a trip). Call service from "Volemot" could appear in long-distance trains or buses. And, of course, there was no threat to "state security" - mobile communications without encryption devices are very easy to listen to. Therefore, in the future it could well become available to all citizens of the country.

However, for several years, the Volemot project failed to obtain the necessary funding and the development of the system was very slow. Meanwhile, cellular systems in the West were actively developing and gaining popularity. For the beginning - the middle of the 1980s, the former leadership was lost.
"Volemot" was nevertheless completed by the end of the 1980s and was ready to begin deployment, but at that time the "process had already begun" and there was no longer any talk of the possibility of catching up with Europe and the United States.

Nevertheless, the system was launched in a number of cities in the early 90s and is still in operation, just like Altai. Today their main position is professional communications for various services, from taxis to ambulances.

But despite this, a full-fledged cellular communication managed to appear in the USSR. The first operator - Leningrad "Delta Telecom" began its work on September 9, 1991, three and a half months before the collapse of the USSR. This means that work on its installation began six months or a year before this event, when the events that followed in December in Belovezhskaya Pushcha were not predicted even by CIA analysts.

Something interesting. The first cell phones.

Mobile (or rather - car!) phone of the early 80s by Nokia - Mobira Senator. The weight of the apparatus is 15 kilograms.

Mobira Talkman - phone of the second half of the 80s - early 90s. Its weight is only 3 kg.

The first cellular telephone Motorola's DynaTAC 8000X, launched on March 6, 1983. Its development cost about 100 million dollars (of that time!).

The phone weighed 794 grams and had dimensions of 33x4.4x8.9 cm. The battery charge was enough for 1 hour of talk time or 8 hours of standby time. He had a memory for 30 numbers and ONE melody.

This phone cost $3995. He has been on the cellular communication market for 10 years.

In the network of America's first commercial cellular company, Ameritech Mobile, the monthly fee was $50, plus one minute of conversation cost users from 24 to 40 cents (depending on the time of the call). A year after its launch, its network had 12,000 subscribers.

September 9, 1991 is considered the birthday of cellular communications in Russia, when twenty years ago, the mayor of St. Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak, called a colleague from New York on his mobile phone. This call opened the operation of the first Russian mobile network "Delta Telecom", built on Finnish equipment. Today, however, few people remember that from the 60s to the mid-80s, the USSR was one of the leaders in the development of mobile communications.

The USSR was the leader in the development of mobile communications until the mid-80s. Evidence of this is the Altai radiotelephone communication system, developed mainly by the Voronezh Research Institute of Communications, which was the leading organization in the development of military mobile radio communications.

The Altai radiotelephone system was conceived in the late 50s as a means of telephone communication for state leaders, party and industrial nomenklatura - in general, difficult people. The first developments became successful and were awarded a Gold Diploma at an exhibition in Brussels in 1963.

Trial operation of the system began in 1963 in Moscow, a year earlier than its American counterpart. The first systems weighed a lot, they worked on lamps. When they switched to transistors in the 70s, and to microcircuits in the 80s, the weight and dimensions decreased. In the first prototypes, subscriber numbers were dialed using disks, but due to eternal shaking - the devices were installed, as a rule, in cars - they switched to a push-button system.

Story

The Altai system was created in the late 60s by the Voronezh Research Institute of Communications, which developed, among other things, operational mobile communication systems for the USSR Ministry of Defense, and became one of the first mobile radiotelephone networks in Europe operating on the principle of cellular communication - with one (radial construction) or several base stations located on high-rise buildings. Before its introduction, not very convenient ARS car radio stations were used, the simplex mode of which forced the subscriber to periodically switch the mode from reception to transmission using the PTT button. As a result, there was a risk of “muzzling” each other, switching to transmission before the phrase was finished on the other end of the line. Such radio stations also had other negative aspects, for example, the inability to access public networks and the irrational use of frequency bands. To eliminate all these shortcomings, the Altai VHF system was created, of course, a completely domestic development.

Altai started operating in Moscow as far back as 1965, absorbed all the best scientific and technical achievements of those years (in 1963 the system received a Golden Diploma in Brussels), was very complex in terms of the electronic base used in the equipment and allowed for full-duplex connection. True, initially the switching of subscribers was carried out manually - by telephonist girls, but then, as the number of subscribers grew, they completely switched to automatic. Since Altai was not intended for mere mortals (the list of subscribers was already approved by the Council of Ministers), it initially included the functions necessary for the leading personnel of the country: calling by abbreviated numbering, circular calling several subscribers and transmitting instructions to them simultaneously, conference calls - negotiations multiple subscribers at the same time and so on.

Since then, "Altai" has undergone several major upgrades, one of the most significant occurred in 1980 - during the Moscow Olympics. One of the main results of this modernization was the possibility of using information closure equipment, thanks to which the list of Altai subscribers expanded even more - they became the heads of large enterprises, party and government officials, the military-industrial complex, city services and communications enterprises (Mosgortrans, Mosenergo, road services, ambulance, GUVD, MGTS, MGRS, MDRSV ...). By 1994, Altai networks operated in 120 cities of the CIS, and 53% of all mobile communication users had Altai!

Another radical modernization of Altai in Moscow was almost completed in 1995 - as a result, today only frequencies and the analog principle of signal modulation remained from the old system, all equipment was replaced by the Actionet system manufactured by Nokia, which used digital switching methods , call, caller identification. Thus, the Moscow network "Altai", in fact, became the Actionet network. Of course, Russian developments also take place, up to the creation of handy format terminals, but they are used mainly in the regions.

However, even after the introduction of Finnish technologies, the successor to "Altai" in Moscow continued to develop, so together with the Tula developers in the ASVT network - the largest Moscow operator of this type of communication - an automatic number identification system - AON was introduced. Thus, the largest interbank associations, information agencies, embassies, trade missions, commercial structures and individuals have appeared among the users of this network.

Key features

Any person can now become a subscriber of this system (yes, the system is still functioning in the vastness of Russia, 2012), while receiving not only a seven-digit Moscow number, but also such new features as, for example, fax transmission and Internet access (at a small, however, speed - about 12 kbps), connection of GPS devices. It has even become possible to make public radio payphones in those areas where it is simply not profitable to install a copper telephone pair (the ASVT operator, for example, has already installed more than 1000 payphones in the region) or, for example, on river boats. A new service has also appeared for ordinary citizens - a Moscow telephone in a dacha, in a country house in just 5 days, which are needed mainly to go through bureaucratic procedures. In addition, the current Altai network based on Actionet equipment can now be used for all kinds of monitoring and telemetry - from installing sensors on bridges to security and fire protection systems.

Radio communication has come even to the interiors of trams and buses - since the coverage area is 100%, the mobile user of such a network will never be “out of the service area”.

Another area of application is corporate networks (up to the organization of dispatch services), especially when servicing objects such as construction sites or public events. The fact is that today you can connect a DECT base station and, accordingly, several phones of this format to a terminal installed in a car, which allows you to organize mobile communications at any facility without any costs while maintaining the ability to access the citywide network - DECT handsets have range up to 800 meters line of sight and up to 200 in urban areas. In general, it is possible to connect almost any phone to the base module of the radio station.

The use of "Altai" at public events, with a large crowd of people, gives a huge advantage over subscribers of conventional cellular networks - this connection will never "lie down" even from the influx of people wishing to congratulate all their friends on the new year. In emergency cases, when GSM is unavailable, inoperable, or even specially disabled, trunking communication is also indispensable - which is why, along with other types of communication, it is present in collection vehicles, ambulances and rescue services.

In addition to the fundamentally impossible connection failure due to network congestion and continuous coverage of Moscow and the region (up to water bodies and forests), the high availability and throughput of the Moscow RusAltai network is achieved by the ability to connect its subscribers to the Iskra Digital Business Service Network, which allows you to get rid of long dialing, bypassing the overloaded access node to the long-distance network. But, of course, the most important in Altai are the functions necessary for a corporate customer, for which the entire network was actually created - the already mentioned group call, conference calls, “please call”, forwarding, closed corporate network and so on. In GSM networks, all this is just beginning to appear.

Technology

The current radiotelephone network built on the basis of Actionet equipment is a trunked radio communication system of the MRT-1327 standard, that is, it shares the allocated frequency band with several subscribers. The frequency band, which at one time was allocated to Altai, is in the successful range of 300-330 MHz, thanks to which one base station located on a high-rise building (the very first Altai BS was installed on one of Moscow's Stalinist skyscrapers, then it was already transferred on the TV tower), "beats" at 50-100 km, and communication is practically independent of weather conditions and is very stable. By the way, voice transmission is analog (digit is also used, but, on the operator’s equipment or, for example, to transmit the number of the called subscriber), since this allows you to save some bandwidth in comparison with the “digit”. And the quality of voice transmission with a stable connection is noticeably better than in GSM networks. In principle, only one BS is enough for reliable coverage of Moscow, in total, the main provider of Altai communications services, ASVT, has more than 20 base stations installed today, so that the Moscow Region is 100% covered by communications, and there are no “white spots” in no coverage area.

Flaws

The main disadvantage of the Moscow network "Altai" / Actionet directly follows from its advantages - a large radius of one cell forces the use of powerful mobile terminals - you can install this system weighing about 3 kg only in your car, on a boat or put it in a country house. In addition, there are a number of restrictions when signing an agreement for the installation of such a powerful radio station (2 W) in a car: “if the vehicle is equipped with gas-balloon equipment, there is a dielectric hatch or a body, terminal equipment is not installed.”

Of course, phones of a "manual" format exist, but their power and a weak battery simply do not allow them to be fully used in Moscow cells - the range of a wearable handset is about 10 km. By the way, the environmental safety of this type of communication also follows from this - a small antenna on the roof of a car (25 cm) or a summer house is much less harmful to health than a mobile phone at the very ear or in a jeans pocket. The terminals, however, are equipped with their own battery, so that they can work autonomously for 2-3 hours, for example, if electricity is suddenly lost in the country house.

Another small drawback is that there is no need to wait for updates to the lineup of phones. As Nokia created two or three terminals (the old Nokia RD58, the new Nokia RD72, however, Motorola trunking devices began to appear) for Altai frequencies, we will have to use them for the time being. The fact is that the Altai frequencies in other countries are used mainly by the military, and therefore civilian equipment for them is practically not made.

The charms of roaming are also not available - there are quite a few networks of this standard across the country, but if you want, for example, to take your terminal somewhere on an expedition, then you will have to reconnect it on the spot with a new operator - and no SIM cards yet, unfortunately , does not exist - the operator code is flashed directly into the device itself. In addition, on the Internet you can also find complaints about the quality of communication, which, with a weak signal level, is dependent on urban development and terrain, as well as other mobile communications.

Trunking

The word trunking comes from the English trunk - highway, trunk. The main principle of organizing trunked radio communication is the automatic assignment of a free frequency channel for each request and response. That is, in the general case, the channel is selected dynamically - separately for reception, separately for transmission, and if information is temporarily not transmitted, the channel is released for other subscribers.

The main advantages of a trunked network are:

eavesdropping protection through dynamic channel assignment and the use of scramblers;
ease of organizing both individual and group calls, conference calls;
almost instant connection with the subscriber;
the possibility of data transmission over the radio channel;
the possibility of implementing automatic emergency signaling (for example, for hand-held terminals - the "Man fell" mode - if the radio station is in a horizontal and not vertical position for some time, then an alarm signal is automatically transmitted);
the presence of a priority system - the subscriber to whom the alarm needs to be sent can interrupt less important connections;
ease of organizing a local mobile communication network;
network profitability with a small number of subscribers.

Mobile cellular in the politics of the USSR

One of the first Soviet politicians to use mobile cellular communications was Mikhail Gorbachev. During his visit to Finland in April 1987, Nokia Vice President Stefan Widomski suggested to Gorbachev that he make a call from a 1kg Mobira Cityman 450 mobile phone.

“The politician called the USSR Ministry of Communications. This moment is captured in a photograph. Together with the telephone, it was given as a gift to the museum, which opened in 2003, by Stefan Widomski through the director of Neva-Kable, Yuri Matveev. It was he who provided the museum with more detailed written information about the circumstances of the historic call,” says Borisova. By the way, according to foreigners, this Finnish phone model received the affectionate nickname "Gorby" in the world.

The situation is somewhat worse with the reliability of the circumstances of the famous first call of Anatoly Sobchak from St. Petersburg on September 9, 1991.

“According to the oral recollections of living eyewitnesses, the call was made as an act symbolizing the opening of the first Delta Telecom mobile communication network in our country. The press writes that the call was made from a Mobira MD59-NB2 phone. But there is no documentary confirmation of this, ”the specialist says. According to her, several mobile devices of different brands can claim the role of a historical relic at once, which simultaneously entered the museum in 2003 from Delta Telecom.

The first mobile phones, which weighed about three kilos, including an additional unit with power, antenna and control, could be bought in the country for two thousand dollars, the connection cost the same, a minute of conversation was estimated at one dollar. The phones were called "deltas" in honor of "Delta Telecom". The collection of the Popov Central Museum of Communications contains a whole family of such retro telephones. Among them is the famous Nokia 8110 model, which became popular after the strict rescuers of mankind from the movie The Matrix called from it - this model was popularly nicknamed the "banana" because of the shape of the case.

The evolution of the revolution

In the 90s, a mobile phone in Russia was part of the mandatory set of attributes of the luxurious, but sometimes short-lived life of the “new Russians”. Citizens simply held heated debates about whether it was ethical for mobile phone owners to talk on the phone in public places, and some of them carried TV remotes in their pockets, passing them off as prestigious “cellular phones”. By the beginning of the 21st century, a cell phone has become an invariable companion of the everyday work of an ordinary Russian. The current generation simply cannot imagine the life of "ancestors" without a "mobile". “How did they arrange meetings with each other? How they communicated - no Internet, no mobile communications! - St. Petersburg student Irina is surprised. She changes her cell phones every three months, and only calls herself on the landline when she can't find a cell phone in the apartment.

But fans of retro phones in the country have not died out. Thus, there are dozens of them in the collection of Petersburger Dmitry Kazakov. “Someone gives, I buy something, I change something,” says the collector. Prices for old models vary "from a bottle of beer to 8 thousand rubles." “Perhaps the most interesting in the collection is the first touch-screen black and white Alcatel phone one touch Com is the granddaddy of modern iPhones, having only two buttons,” says the Petersburger. According to him, there are no more than fifty serious mobile phone collectors in Russia, and there are more of them in the world - about 500 people.

About health risks

Like any demanded detail of our time, a cell phone quickly overgrown with a heap of rumors and disputes about its possible danger to human life. “There are practical studies confirming a certain effect of ultra-high frequencies of cell phone radiation on the brain. Although the power of such radiation is small and purely theoretically should not pose a danger to humans. But the recommendations not to carry a mobile phone in your pocket, not to put the phone next to the bedside table before going to bed and to call as rarely as possible have a real basis, ”says Nina Borisova. Experts do not recommend holding the phone near the head while connecting with the subscriber. At this time, its output power is maximum. Every mobile phone user needs to know that especially powerful radiation is when driving a car, on a train, in tunnels, in metal garages and reinforced concrete buildings.

At the same time, a cell phone can often save a life, rescuers say. “When a person goes on a boat to the“ open water ”or goes to the forest to pick mushrooms, he simply has to take a fully charged phone with him!” - says the press officer of the St. Petersburg Ministry of Emergency Situations Tatyana Skrigonyuk. A call from a mobile phone also helped out those who remained under the rubble of emergency buildings when the bill was for minutes. Fortunately, now no one can imagine their life without a mobile phone.

Soviet people have always been proud of their country. Such a concept as patriotism was not an empty word for them. But after the collapse of the USSR, almost any resident of the country was sure that mobile communications and related technologies came from abroad: Japan, Europe, the USA, and even China. Few people knew that it was Russia that was the pioneer in the field of mobile and cellular communications. The world's first automatic mobile communication was created and operated in the USSR. And if it were not for the complete isolation from the needs of the people of the leadership of the Soviet Union, then even in Soviet times, the citizens of the country would have had mobile phones of domestic production.

Early mobile communications developed slowly in the US and Europe, overcoming great technical and financial difficulties. The first mobile communication devices, tested in the late 40s, were so bulky that they could hardly fit in the trunk of a car. In order to make a call through such a device, a free radio channel and an operator serving this network were required.

Compact radio stations also appeared in the USSR in the 1940s, and during the war, Soviet designers significantly improved the existing models, which made it possible to easily place "radio telephone" equipment in the trunks of official cars of government officials. Communication was provided by a dedicated radio frequency and the operation of dispatcher consoles. It was quite difficult to conduct a conversation on such a telephone: one of the subscribers could conduct a conversation, the other only listened. In this regard, the conversation always lasted a long time and caused a lot of difficulties.

But, Soviet designers managed to make such a phone, which was practically an analogue of the official apparatus on the desktop. There were no such structures abroad yet.

The very first mobile phone was created in the Communications Research Institute of the city of Voronezh in 1958. The work was given the code name "Altai". Voronezh designers created subscriber (telephones) and base stations (equipment that provides stable communication between subscribers). Antenna systems for mobile communications were developed at the Moscow Research Institute, and Leningrad, Belarusian and Moldovan specialists worked on other components of the system. As a result, a unique innovative product was created - automatic mobile communication "Altai". It was a complete telephone communications that works like a regular phone. The innovation was that the system itself found a free radio channel, established a connection, transmitted the dialed telephone number and guaranteed to connect subscribers. Even the external design of the phone in the car was changed - there were buttons instead of a dial. The bureaucratic aristocracy was delighted with car phones.

But still, "Altai" was not a full-fledged cellular system: one base station was able to serve one city with suburbs and had only 16 radio channels. The antenna, installed at the highest point in the area, could only provide communication for tens of kilometers around.

An American prototype of such a mobile phone was launched a year after the commissioning of the Soviet mobile system. And its commercial operation began in 1969.

In Russia, the Altai system operated in thirty cities by 1970! Soviet party and economic leaders used in their work telephones placed directly in official vehicles. It can be reasonably considered that at that time the USSR was a leader in the development of mobile communications. But Soviet designers did not "rest on their laurels" - they continued to improve the Altai system. New radio channels were allocated in a larger range, which made it possible to serve a large number of subscribers. Through the use of microcircuits, subscriber stations became smaller in size - they could be carried in a small suitcase. The Moscow base station of the "Altai" system, located in the premises of the Ostankino television tower, showed its best side in servicing the Olympics-80.

But in the course of operation, shortcomings of the system were also revealed. For example, the quality of communication was very dependent on the location of the car with a mobile communication device. Therefore, the designers have developed a scheme for the placement of base stations, taking into account the overlap of neighboring territories. And although Soviet engineers were ready to carry out the developed project, no order was received from the country's leadership.

The "Altai" system well corresponded to the existing commanding hierarchy: the leader had the opportunity to simultaneously speak with several subordinates (now this method is called conference calls). Each boss had his own rights and opportunities to work as a mobile network subscriber. Some could call anywhere in the world, others only to the phones of a particular city, a particular organization or a particular subscriber. But most citizens of the country were not able to use mobile communications. The country's leadership was in no hurry to share with the people such a luxury item as a mobile phone.

Designers and engineers were ready to work on the new generation communication system equipment. They even gave the name to this system "Volemot" (abbreviated name of the cities where there were development teams - Voronezh, Leningrad, Molodechno, Ternopil). The new system provided for the placement of a large number of base stations. Switching from one station to another took place instantly and imperceptibly for the subscriber while driving. This function made it possible to consider "Volemot" as a full-fledged cellular communication system.

But the country's leadership considered that the people's access to cellular communications posed a threat to "state security" (although without encryption, the signal could be easily listened to). Funding for the project has been suspended indefinitely. In the West at this time, cellular communications gained popularity. By 1980, the leadership of the USSR in the development of a new generation of mobile communications was irretrievably lost.

In 1991-1992, the first cellular operators of the NMT-450 standard appeared in Leningrad and Moscow. The prices for this service were very high and coverage was limited. And although many citizens could not afford to pay for mobile communications, access to this type of communication was open to everyone.

There was also a place for the Altai and Volemot systems. They were used when reliable and inexpensive mobile communications with a large coverage area were needed. These systems allowed the possibility of connecting a special device that encrypted the conversation and it was practically impossible to listen to it. Until now, the networks "Altai" and "Volemot" are used in many cities and towns of Russia. Usually they are called "trunk". They adequately serve in various professional areas: from taxis to emergency medical care.

By the end of the 90s, conventional mobile phones (GSM standard) became more reliable, and most importantly, miniature. And this turned out to be the decisive factor that led to the refusal of users from Volemots and Altaevs in favor of small pipes. Despite this, in some remote areas of Russia, you can connect to the Altai or Volemot networks, which work quite stably.

Materials used:
http://maxpark.com/community/4057/content/1809324
http://www.izmerov.narod.ru/okno/index.html
http://www.livejournal.ru/themes/id/13773

But, Soviet designers managed to make such a phone, which was practically an analogue of the official apparatus on the desktop. There were no such structures abroad yet.

The very first mobile phone was created in the Communications Research Institute of the city of Voronezh in 1958. The work was given the code name "Altai". Voronezh designers created subscriber (telephones) and base stations (equipment that provides stable communication between subscribers). Antenna systems for mobile communications were developed at the Moscow Research Institute, and Leningrad, Belarusian and Moldovan specialists worked on other components of the system. As a result, a unique innovative product was created - automatic mobile communication "Altai". It was a full-fledged telephone connection, working like a regular phone. The innovation was that the system itself found a free radio channel, established a connection, transmitted the dialed telephone number and guaranteed to connect subscribers. Even the external design of the phone in the car was changed - there were buttons instead of a dial. The bureaucratic aristocracy was delighted with car phones.

An American prototype of such a mobile phone was launched a year after the commissioning of the Soviet mobile system. And its commercial operation began in 1969.

Materials used:
http://maxpark.com/community/4057/content/1809324
http://www.izmerov.narod.ru/okno/index.html
http://www.livejournal.ru/themes/id/13773