No, we are talking about cellular telephony, and the underlying technology
required to make the service affordable to the masses.
There was mobile telephone, as you point out, and the cost kept it from being
more widely available. A 'car phone' was something that not a lot of people
saw as a necessity at any price. Had cell phones remained stuck at the bag
phone stage, it would still be a niche product today.
There were competing technologies at the time from the Ham Radio community via
phone patch, but they couldn't be 'bought', they had to be earned via an
amateur radio license, which also limited adoption.
Then there was the privacy aspect that wasn't resolved until digital cell phone
technology came about. Any kid with a scanner could listen in to the mobile
telephone frequencies, or to the first generation analog cell phone technology.
And finally, cellular telephony was not exclusively a U.S. phenomenon. Europe
and Asia (Japan) were also working on cellular telephone concepts, and were not
being held back by the FCC or AT&T collusion with RCC.
http://bebusinessed.com/history/history-cell-phones/
John
----- Original Message -----
From: Craig Birkmaier
To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Sunday, July 23, 2017 6:44 PM
Subject: [opendtv] Re: Senator challenges Ajit Pai over evidence for net
neutrality repeal
On Jul 23, 2017, at 4:47 PM, John Shutt (Redacted sender "shuttj" for DMARC)
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Craig,
The concept for cellular telephony may have originated in July of 1945, but
it couldn't have been implemented much sooner than it was due to the absence of
the underlying circuit miniaturization and battery technology.
Why?
We are talking about mobile radios, not today's cell phones. Here is what a
mobile radio looked like in 1948.
