Following a brief prologue and historical overview, such technical issues as the repertoire of systems and services, management of the airwaves, the operating environment, service quality, network issues and cell size, channel coding and modulation, speech coding, diversity, multiplex, and multiple access (FDMA, TDMA, CDMA) are discussed. Also addressed are the potential economic and sociological impacts of mobile radio communications in the wake of the redistribution of airwaves at the World Administrative Radio Conference WARC '92. Performance dependence on multipath delay (related to the cell size and terrain configuration), Doppler frequency (related to the carrier frequency, data rate. and the speed of vehicles), and message length (may dictate the choice of multiple access) is briefly discussed.