The most prevalent communication form is cellular radio and specifically cellular data. While mobile communication devices, had existed for many years before cellular technology, they had limited coverage, shared frequency space, and were essentially two-way radios. Bell Labs built some trial mobile phone technologies in the 1940s (Mobile Telephone Service) and 1950s (Improved Mobile Telephone Service) but had very limited success. There were also no uniform standards for mobile telephony at the time. It wasn't until the cellular concept was devised by Douglas H. Ring and Rae Young in 1947 and then built by Richard H. Frenkiel, Joel S. Engel, and Philip T. Porter at Bell Labs in the 1960s that larger and robust mobile deployments could be realized. The handoff between cells was conceived and built by Amos E. Joel Jr. also of Bell Labs, which allowed for handoff when moving cellular devices. All these technologies combined to form the first cellular telephone system, first cellular phone, and the first cellular call made by Martin Cooper of Motorola on April 3, 1979. Following is an ideal cellular model where cells are represented as hexagonal areas of optimal placement. 

The technologies and proof of concept designs eventually led to the first commercial deployments and public acceptance of mobile telephone systems in 1979 by NTT in Japan, and then in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden in 1981. The Americas didn't have a cell system until 1983. These first technologies are known as 1G, or the first generation of cellular technology. A primer for the generations and their features will be detailed next, however, the next section will specifically describe 4G-LTE as that is the modern standard for cellular communication and data. The following sections will describe other IoT and future cellular standards such as NB-IOT and 5G.