C-Netz
Encyclopedia
1G
1G refers to the first-generation of wireless telephone technology, mobile telecommunications. These are the analog telecommunications standards that were introduced in the 1980s and continued until being replaced by 2G digital telecommunications...
analog
Analog signal
An analog or analogue signal is any continuous signal for which the time varying feature of the signal is a representation of some other time varying quantity, i.e., analogous to another time varying signal. It differs from a digital signal in terms of small fluctuations in the signal which are...
cellular phone system deployed and operated in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
(at first West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
) by DeTeMobil
T-Mobile
T-Mobile International AG is a German-based holding company for Deutsche Telekom AG's various mobile communications subsidiaries outside Germany. Based in Bonn, Germany, its subsidiaries operate GSM and UMTS-based cellular networks in Europe, the United States, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands...
(formerly of Deutsche Bundespost
Deutsche Bundespost
The Deutsche Bundespost was created in 1947 as a successor to the Reichspost . Between 1947 and 1950 the enterprise was called Deutsche Post...
Telekom, currently Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom AG is a telecommunications company headquartered in Bonn, Germany. It is the largest telecommunications company in Europe....
). It utilized the C450 standard and was the third and last update of a series of analog mobile phone systems used primarily within Germany, superseding the B-Netz
B-Netz
B-Netz was an analog, commercial mobile radio telephone network that operated by the Deutsche Bundespost in Germany from 1972 until 1994. The system was also implemented in neighboring countries Austria, The Netherlands and Luxembourg...
and the A-Netz before it. It has been decommissioned, replaced by both the newer D-Netz (GSM-900) and E-Netz (GSM-1800) systems.
Timeline
The C-Netz was officially introduced in 1985 (with unofficial trials in 1984) to replace the existing B-Netz/B2-Netz system used in Germany at the time. Due to problems with the B-Netz mobile networks, early adoption of C-Netz was very high, especially in rural areas which had lacked prior B-Netz coverage. However, like other first-generation analog systems, it suffered from poor call quality and was susceptible to eavesdroppingEavesdropping
Eavesdropping is the act of secretly listening to the private conversation of others without their consent, as defined by Black's Law Dictionary...
. The system was built up in West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
and West Berlin
West Berlin
West Berlin was a political exclave that existed between 1949 and 1990. It comprised the western regions of Berlin, which were bordered by East Berlin and parts of East Germany. West Berlin consisted of the American, British, and French occupation sectors, which had been established in 1945...
, but following German reunification
German reunification
German reunification was the process in 1990 in which the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany , and when Berlin reunited into a single city, as provided by its then Grundgesetz constitution Article 23. The start of this process is commonly referred by Germans as die...
in 1990, was rapidly built up in the new German states.
By December of 1988, the service had grown to nearly 100,000 customers, and reached a peak user base of around 800,000 in the early 1990s. It remained popular throughout the decade as a preferred system for mobile car phones, particularly rural taxi
Taxicab
A taxicab, also taxi or cab, is a type of vehicle for hire with a driver, used by a single passenger or small group of passengers, often for a non-shared ride. A taxicab conveys passengers between locations of their choice...
services, where it enjoyed an advantage in reception. However, it was inferior in all other ways to the newer GSM networks, and by the late 1990s Deutsche Telekom stopped accepting new customers. Its user base dropped rapidly; in 1999, it went from 230,000 customers in October to 210,000 customers in November.
The C-Netz service was shut down on December 31, 2000. Some cells near the German-Dutch border remained active for several more months but were eventually discontinued as well.
Technical information
The C450 standard was developed by Siemens in 1980. It is a 1G1G
1G refers to the first-generation of wireless telephone technology, mobile telecommunications. These are the analog telecommunications standards that were introduced in the 1980s and continued until being replaced by 2G digital telecommunications...
analog cellular standard that utilized non-audible in-band signaling, audio scrambling via band-inversion and cell network call queuing when congested. Cellular nodes varied in size, supporting a primary cell size of 15-20 km and micro-cells of 2-3 km in size. Channel bandwidth was typically 20 kHz, although it could be operated in a narrow-band mode of only 12 kHz. As its name implies, it was designed for the 450 MHz UHF frequency range.
Roaming
The C-Netz's C450 standard was a heterogeneous cellular system that inhibited International roaming. FranceFrance
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
used the RadioCom 2000 analog standard while Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, the Netherlands and Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
used the NMT
Nordic Mobile Telephone
NMT is the first fully automatic cellular phone system...
-450 analog standard.
Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
's own C-Netz system utilized the NMT standard, not C450. This differs from previous systems used in Austria (A-Netz, B-Netz
B-Netz
B-Netz was an analog, commercial mobile radio telephone network that operated by the Deutsche Bundespost in Germany from 1972 until 1994. The system was also implemented in neighboring countries Austria, The Netherlands and Luxembourg...
) that were based on German standards.