We Could Have Had Cellphones Four Decades Earlier

Thanks for nothing, Federal Communications Commission.
 

- Thomas Winslow Hazlett

The basic idea of the cellphone was introduced to the public in 1945—not in Popular Mechanics or Science, but in the downhome Saturday Evening Post. Millions of citizens would soon be using “handie-talkies,” declared J.K. Jett, the head of the Federal Communications Commission (fcc). Licenses would have to be issued, but that process “won’t be difficult.” The revolutionary technology, Jett promised in the story, would be formulated within months.But permission to deploy it would not. The government would not allocate spectrum to realize the engineers’ vision of “cellular radio” until 1982, and licenses authorizing the service would not be fully distributed for another seven years. That’s one heck of a bureaucratic delay.

PRIMITIVE PHONES AND SPECTRUM-HOARDING

BEFORE THERE WERE cellphones, there was the mobile telephone service, or mts. Launched in 1946, this technology required unwieldy and expensive equipment—the transceiver could fill the trunk of a sedan—and its networks faced tight capacity constraints. In the beginning, the largest mts markets had no more than 44 channels. As late as 1976, Bell System’s mobile network in New York could host just 545 subscribers. Even at sky-high prices, there were long waiting lists for subscriptions.

Cellular networks were an ingenious way to expand service dramatically. A given market would be split into cells with a base station in each. These stations, often located on towers to improve line-of-sight with mobile phone users, were able both to receive wireless signals and to transmit them. The base stations were themselves linked together, generally by wires, and connected to networks delivering plain old telephone service.