Our Reliance on Cellphones Began 35 Years Ago This Week (qz.com) 123
With 95% of Americans owning a cellphone, it can feel like we've been calling, texting, and tweeting on the go forever. But the infrastructure supporting our cellphones has actually not been around that long. From a report: While we're now on 4G networks, it was only 35 years ago this week that Ameritech (now part of AT&T) launched 1G, or the first commercial cell phone network. That network, called the Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS), went online on October 13, 1983, allowing people in the Chicago area to make and receive mobile calls for the first time. Ameritech president Bob Barnett, who made the first call, decided to make the historic moment count by ringing Alexander Graham Bell's grandson. A little more than a year later, UK's Vodafone hosted its first commercial call on New Year's Day. Israel's Pelephone followed suit in 1986, followed by Australia in 1987.
Cellphone technology had been around for quite a while before that. AMPS was in development for around 15 years, and engineers made the first mobile call on a prototype network a decade before the first commercial network call. It took that long to troubleshoot the various hardware, software, and radio frequency issues associated with setting up a fully functional commercial network.
Cellphone technology had been around for quite a while before that. AMPS was in development for around 15 years, and engineers made the first mobile call on a prototype network a decade before the first commercial network call. It took that long to troubleshoot the various hardware, software, and radio frequency issues associated with setting up a fully functional commercial network.
General affordability (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:General affordability (Score:4, Informative)
I had a "cellphone" provided by my employer 30 ago. It was expensive and huge. "a dollar a holler" It was only provided for managers and some territory supervisors.
Now all our managers and field employees have them. We have custom applications so all technicians can see their assigned calls and update them live.
Re: General affordability (Score:2)
And the modern mobile phone networks started actually earlier than that - in 1981, which means that it was 37 years ago.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
Re:General affordability (Score:5, Informative)
Unlimited plans existed years before that, just not in the US.
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I had an unlimited plan before that IN THE US.
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On the west coast of the USA, by 2004 even most poor people had cell phones, and you could buy prepaid phones at most convenience stores.
By 2009 they were standard kit even for the homeless.
35 years ago, most people didn't even have a pager.
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Me too, and that was cheaper then the RIPOFF Lan lanes the college offered. Which they thought it would be a good idea to charge students $50 per month for the phone, and then charge then $0.10 per minute for local call, and way more for long distance.
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It's kind of amazing how these companies have massively popular products that dominate the market (Nokia, Blackberry) and then start talking completely bollocks, baffling everyone with management-speak buzzwords until they become irrelevant.
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They weren't flying off the shelves but we still sold a few each day. By 2001 just about everyone I knew had a cell phone of their own.
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And even before then (1970) there was Improved Mobile Telephone Service IMTS (full duplex!) where the control head with handset, pulse dial, and a real bell (I have one of those, it is big and scary) but most of the electronics is a suitcase size box located in the trunk (I don't have this beast). Back then only the stinking rich had car phones, these phones were marveled by many watching Banacek TV series who had one in his Rolls Royce limo. Rolls Royce still sells cars with a place for a IMTS style car ph
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Huh? I got my first modern cell phone in 2004, with a fixed monthly rate, in Australia. Can't recall whether it was with Telstra or Optimus now.
It's a Samsung flip phone—an X640, I believe. I still have it, and it still works.
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Mobile phone users before then were mostly men.
Unlimited plans doubled the market by making it more attractive to women.
And data plans made them more attractive to the younger generation.
Pretty good going back 28 years ago. (Score:2)
My first cell phone was a car phone in 1990 in Canada.
The cost was $30/month for a three year term plus (I believe) $57 for the radio license and something like $200 for car installation.
Coverage was all through Ontario for about 200 minutes a month. I can't remember what happened if you went over but I think it was around $0.30 per minute.
I still have that cell phone number - it is probably the second most constant thing in life (my first being my Social Insurance Number - Canadian version of SS).
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It wasn't a smartphone. And it didn't do text.
And it was almost as big as a frigging brick, and the huge battery only lasted (on standby) about 6 hours. So if you wanted to use it all business day you needed an extra battery.
But only 2 years later I got a StarTac, which was tiny, and with the optional larger battery (still tiny) lasted more than a day. And the plan was still affordable.
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We can keep playing this game. However by 2009 Cell phones were quite common with the masses. (Not smart phones, but normal cell phones)
I would say general ability of Cell phone was actually 1997/1998 when they stopped roaming fees, and a reasonable amount of minutes for around $25. This point it was more affordable then some LAN Line phone services.
At around this time, people with Cell phones became common occurrence, not not something particularly impressive, compared to the late 1980's and early 1990'
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The data do not support this claim.
https://blog.cartesian.com/the... [cartesian.com]
There is no spike or abrupt increase in 2009.
Re: General affordability (Score:2)
Shouldn't that also be an 'Airplane' reference.
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It was easier with live operators, you could just connect a radio relay to the phone system and no extra tech was needed. Every call goes to the operator, and you tell them where you want to call.
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All you needed to say was, "Mr Smart? Your shoe is ringing."
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It wasn't as much a phone, but a 2 way radio, that may have been hooked up to a Telephone.
This type of technology would only scale so far. Perhaps a few dozen people per city. Also you cannot have any real confidential call because it would be so easy for anyone to listen to you radio signal.
The CB Radio was probably far more common then.
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or in their pocket (Star Trek).
Those communicators from TOS didn't have texting, video, pictures. What they did have was broadcast quality audio with entire planetary coverage with no dropouts (except when Klingons are present) and no data caps. And the batteries lasted forever.
Re: Nordic Mobile Telephone (Score:1)
Yep NTT in 1979 (Japan)
NMT in 1981 (North Europe)
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ARP, 1971 in Finland, "0G"
Dembe and Me (Score:2)
I still don't own a cell phone. I'm like Raymond fucking Reddington - I let my servant, whom I choose to call "SuperKendall", for sentimental reasons, carry one of several dozen burner phones which I use in the event that I want to order some chateaubriand and a nice Richebourg Grand Cru 1949 from my local watering hole.
Re: Mobilephones (Score:1)
right, in europe they r named for their mobility whereas in us for their technology...wonder what that sez about our cultures?-)
cellphone (Score:1, Insightful)
FALSE.
*Your* reliance on cell phones began 30 years ago.
*I* can survive without one.
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OK. However a cheap Cell phone plan, is cheaper then a LAN Phone connection.
Our *transition* to cell phones began 35 years ago (Score:2)
We are still not 100% reliant on cell phones. Most businesses and homes still use land lines. A very significant chunk of people are cutting the cord. But they are not even the majority yet.
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Actually, only 40% of US households still had landlines as of late 2015. It’s almost certainly a smaller percentage now.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/... [digitaltrends.com]
Next story (Score:3)
Our reliance on clean water started ... ...
Our reliance on indoor plumbing started
Advances that lead to better lives for people are awesome. Reliance on them is a good thing.
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Clean water and indoor plumbing are up there with immunization and antibiotics-they have saved millions of lives. Cell phones will never do that.
Cell phone are nothing more than a simple convenience, just like microwave ovens, dishwashers, and wireless remove controls. We can easily live without them without significantly reducing our standard of living, health, or life expectancy.
Challenge your dependency and put down your cell phone and tune out of insta-pic, insta-txt, insta-meme, insta-comment, insta-e
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Kids staying indoors and developing mental health disorders from social networking is not awesome.
It's a great deal of more awesome than setting up strawman arguements.
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1971....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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ohhh crap... it's 1979
Canada? (Score:3)
TFA mentions 1G cellular service beginning in the USA (1983), UK (1984), Israel (1986) and Australia (1987.)
No mention of Canada, where cellular service went live on Canada Day (July 1) 1985.
I suspect there are other omissions.
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As other posters have pointed out, Norway and Japan were notable omissions who had systems that pre-dated those in the USA.
You don't need to mention the entire history of cellular deployment in an article like TFS. But surely, omitting other contemporary or antecedent countries (like Canada, Norway, and Japan) and then following on to others (Israel and Australia) seems like sloppy research.
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I saw my first one (in a bag) either 1986 or 1987 in Canada.
Quite impressive as it was in Belleville Ontario which means there was some infrastructure back then.
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The major players at the time (Cantel and Bell Mobility) built out in the major metropolitan areas and then built on the highways in between the cities (401, 400, hw7, etc.) Belleville was between Toronto and Montreal (and Kingston in between) so it (rightly) got some attention.
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My family got one somehere around 1988 or so - I think Cantel actually started building out in the Vancouver area and saw some news article about it. Next thing I knew, on the wekend we headed to the mall and visited the store. We go
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Summary is directly lifted from Wikipedia article, which provides just these examples.
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I suspect there are other omissions.
By my count I would suspect 190 other omissions.
Statistics... (Score:3)
With 95% of Americans owning a cellphone...
Source for that? I'm kinda doubting it's that high given general age distribution.
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Says about 327MM in the US [wikipedia.org] so right around 95%. Sure, many people have two or even more cell phones, but there is still about one cellphone per person in the US, and it's been a LONG time since I've ever ran into a person who did not have a cellphone - even the elderly.
Your figures are a red herring here. The statement is "95% of the U.S. population owns a cell phone". You don't get to use the additional phones some individuals have and apply them to the segment that does not have a phone, so a chart counting active lines is useless. Lots of those phones are corporate plans that may not even be owned by an individual person, or will be a secondary line to their own personal phone.
Think about the very elderly that do not have a cell phone because they missed that technolog
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So what data do you have that says otherwise? I know in my neighborhood, the kids on each side (all between the ages of 7 and 17) have cellphones. And the retired couple (in their 80s) two houses down have cellphones too...
Well, the average age for the start of phone ownership is 10 years [techcrunch.com]. Now, let's look at a population graph [populationpyramid.net]. Oops, we're at 6.1% already just with people under the age of five. That "95%" figure is already bullshit. Even if everyone over the age of 10 owned a cell phone we're only at 87.6% of the population, and we haven't removed the the top end (which is very sparse, I admit) or the scattered people in the middle (poverty, fear of radio waves, etc).
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I agree that the number is a red herring, but I do wonder where all those people are that don't have personal cell phones. I don't carry a cell phone myself, but I can't think of a single adult that I know who doesn't. The only people other than myself that I can think of are teenagers in large families and other children that are just too young to have a cell phone.
Personally I don't have a cell phone because I only spend a few minutes per day where I don't have access to a regular phone and computer. A ce
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I agree that the number is a red herring, but I do wonder where all those people are that don't have personal cell phones. I don't carry a cell phone myself, but I can't think of a single adult that I know who doesn't. The only people other than myself that I can think of are teenagers in large families and other children that are just too young to have a cell phone.
https://www.populationpyramid.... [populationpyramid.net]
More than 20% of the population is under 18, it's very, very easy to hit over 5% with what you just said. ;-)
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That list makes me wonder what people in the Maldives do with their two phones per person.
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I don't know about other places but I live in small town kansas and the gas and power meter are both connected.
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The age distribution would actually agree with it quite well if you consider that pretty much everyone over the age of 7 owns a mobile phone. The under 7s account for 5% of the population currently.
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The age distribution would actually agree with it quite well if you consider that pretty much everyone over the age of 7 owns a mobile phone.
No, it wouldn't. [slashdot.org]
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Yeah, and the source is wrong, because they didn't even get figures for over 20% of the population.
Cool Video from 1978 Regarding AMPS Service (Score:1)
The AT&T Tech Channel under the AT&T Archives section has a cool video regarding AMPS service on youtube.com.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
I am not reliant on a cell phone (Score:1)
I do carry one (when I remember), and find it useful sometimes, but I will never be reliant on it. When they first came into common usage, I started
refering to them as electronic leashes, and now they are also electronic tracking devices. I don't need that.
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I finally broke down a couple of years ago and bought a cheap flip Tracfone to carry when I leave the house, in case of emergency, or I might need to make a VERY random call, since it's near IMPOSSIBLE these days to find a pay phone anymore. Sometimes I forget to grab it when walking out the door though.
To give you some idea how often I actually use it, I buy the 60 minute card(for $20) once every 90 days (I get double minutes because of the model phone I bought). Since the unused minutes "roll over", I cur
old guy here (Score:3)
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The cell phone showed up when I got a real job...actually when I got my second real job. You could go to lunch. People took messages and you could call them back with no hurt feelings and having digested lunch. You could go on vacation. Calls on vacation were tough to get, especially at the beach or in another country. You could go to sleep. No one would send you a message or call you after hours in 99% of situations.
And it's still like that today.
All you need to do is take control of your life. When you're overseas, use a different SIM card (or different phone entirely). Make it clear to your clients and employers that your time is YOUR time and contacting you in your time is chargeable/subject to overtime.
When I go overseas, I rarely receive a call unless I'm being sent there by my employer (in which case I'm working, not holidaying).
Phones are not some time stealing monster, they are just devices like an a
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Another old guy here. Guess what? You can turn the phones *OFF*. Or put them in do-not-disturb mode. Or even (get this!) just plain *ignore* them when they buzz! Finish your lunch. Relax on vacation. Sleep soundly. *You* are in control of when your phone rings.
"But other people get annoyed when I do that." Not your problem. Seriously, man. Unless you've undertaken some obligation (such as agreeing to be on-call for work) let them just piss off and leave a message. They need to learn boundaries. Give yo
NMT launched 1 October 1981 (Score:2)
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First one was the Motorola Dyna-Tac (Score:2)
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