26.1.2017
As every year, HT Museum participates in Museums at Night Festival, which is always held on the last Friday in the month, and hence this time it is on 27 January. The programmes in all the museums commence at 6 p.m. and end at 1 a.m. The programmes are published in free booklets distributed in public places and also available at http://nocmuzeja.hr/.
This is an opportunity for enthusiasts of museums, culture, and knowledge to visit the Croatian museums, galleries, and other similar institutions that will provide its visitors with a broad range of high quality programmes.
We are hereby inviting you all to HT Museum, which, in addition to its permanent display on early history of telecommunications, provides also a new exhibition entitled “Mobile Revolution 1991 – 2016 – an Exhibition on 25 Years of Mobile Telephony in Croatia”.
In addition to enjoying the exhibition, visitors are given the opportunity to take a photo or a selfie with the first mobile phone in Croatia.
More about the exhibition
No communication technology has thus far reached the level of global availability, acceptance, and popularity on a par with that reached by mobile telephony. According to the data provided by the World Bank, in 2015, there were 98.62 mobile telephones per 100 inhabitants at the global level with clear indicators of further acceleration of growth, whilst in June 2016, Croatia saw 4,449,929 mobile telephony users, which suggests a user density standing at 103.85 %.
In 2016, Croatia marked the 25th anniversary of public commercial mobile telephone network. Hrvatski Telekom (the legal successor of HPT) was the first to introduce mobile telephony achievements in Croatia on 11 January 1991 through its commercial launch of the first Croatian mobile telephone network named “Mobitel” based on NMT standard. The inclusive cost of a mobile device, handset plus connection fees, was in excess of 100,000 dinars, the currency in use at that time, or approximately DM 14,400. That amount was equal to the amount one needed to buy a car.
At the beginning of 1991, there were only around 200 mobile telephony subscribers in Croatia, whilst already by the end of the same year the number of mobile telephony subscribers skyrocketed to reach 2,583 users. The mobile devices used were primarily Carryphone Maxon, Benefon Forte, Benefon Class, as well as Dancall mobile phones, amongst which Dancall Logic HP needs to be highlighted, as the first mobile phone available on the Croatian market.
Thanks to what at the time was HPT, some of these devices were also used during the Homeland War. In 1994, the capacity of analogous NMT network was largely full and hence the preparations commenced for the introduction of a new European digital GSM technology. The first president of the Republic of Croatia, Franjo Tuđman, launched the Croatian GSM network on 11 August 1995 through a symbolic telephone call, and hence its experimental work commenced, whilst the commercial exploitation of the new network of the 2nd generation named CRONET commenced on 1 February 1996.
The sending of globally popular alphanumeric messages known under the name SMS in CRONET network was possible commencing from 15 April 1999, whilst one of the best known prepaid services of mobile telephony known under the commercial name SIMPA was launched in December 1999, and in less than 6 months it already saw 100,000 users. The service that, commencing from May 2000, provided the opportunity of Internet search through mobile phones was named CRONET WAP. Mobile telephony became increasingly accessible, both concerning the price and the territory, due to excellent signal strength, and hence in June 2006, T-Mobile Hrvatska reached an incredible figure of 2 million users of mobile telephony.
UMTS service for mobile Internet access became available in Croatia in 2005. On 15 June 2005, T-Mobile Hrvatska commenced providing mobile telephony services of the third generation. Certainly, the ordinary mobile telephone was not sufficient for managing the rich and diverse digital content, since it needed to be provided with the features of personal computers. The currently omnipresent smartphone is actually an electronic device that integrated the best features of a mobile telephone and a personal computer. Due to digital technology, these features were successfully integrated, as well as those of a large number of other devices such as photo and video camera, navigation system, FM radio, phone, calculator, audio and video player, in addition to a large number of other features. On 23 March 2012, the first commercial 4G network in Croatia was launched based on LTE technology, and Hrvatski Telekom provided its users with all the advantages of fast mobile Internet.
The 4G network base stations were initially placed in the largest cities (Zagreb, Split, Osijek, and Rijeka), which was logical due to a high concentration of users, whilst the implementation of new technologies continued also in other parts of Croatia. Subsequently, Croatia was on a par with other countries in the world concerning the issue of mobile telephony, and it continued its successful communication metamorphosis that was initiated over 25 years ago, which commencing from the situation of occasional and partial communication connection led to the current situation of overall network coverage.