<P> Newer technology has been developed and rolled out in a series of waves or generations . The "generation" terminology only became widely used when 3G was launched, but is now used retroactively when referring to the earlier systems . </P> <P> First automatic analogue cellular systems deployed were NTT's system first used in Tokyo in 1979, later spreading to the whole of Japan, and NMT in the Nordic countries in 1981 . </P> <P> The first analogue cellular system widely deployed in North America was the Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS). It was commercially introduced in the Americas in 13 October 1983, Israel in 1986, and Australia in 1987 . AMPS was a pioneering technology that helped drive mass market usage of cellular technology, but it had several serious issues by modern standards . It was unencrypted and easily vulnerable to eavesdropping via a scanner; it was susceptible to cell phone "cloning" and it used a Frequency - division multiple access (FDMA) scheme and required significant amounts of wireless spectrum to support . </P> <P> On 6 March 1983, the DynaTAC 8000X mobile phone launched on the first US 1G network by Ameritech . It cost $100 m to develop, and took over a decade to reach the market . The phone had a talk time of just thirty - five minutes and took ten hours to charge . Consumer demand was strong despite the battery life, weight, and low talk time, and waiting lists were in the thousands . </P>

When were cell phones first released to the public