I would like to take a break for a moment to consider the roots of one of our most favorite of modern tech toys: the cell phone. Why today? Well, you see, today marks the 25th anniversary of the very first commercial cell phone call ever. Yes, that’s right, October 13, 1983, was the first time in history that anyone ever made a commercial telephone call from a phone that was not hard-wired into a land line somewhere. So what was the first cell phone like, who made it and what happened to the first-to-market company? Let’s take a little stroll down memory lane (well, maybe a history lesson for most of you!) and see what we can find out.
The place was Soldier’s Field in Chicago, Illinois. The caller was none other than the president of Ameritech Mobile, Bob Barnett. The recipient of the call was the great-grandson of the creator of the telephone itself, Alexander Graham Bell. So what was the first cell phone like? Today, we refer to an iPhone that has been rendered un-usable as “bricked”. However, this phone was literally the size of a real brick and almost as heavy (ok, maybe not quite that bad – but it was huge, coming in at 13 inches long and weighing 1.75 lbs.). The first commercial cell phone was manufactured by none other than Motorla, the Motorla DynaTAC 8000X. It’s retail price was almost $4,000 off the shelf! How long of a contract would you have to sign to amortize the cost of that baby?
The call was placed on the Ameritech Mobile network. The initial network consisted of 12 cellular sites in the Chicago metropolitan area. Prices would be totally shocking for anyone from 2008. Basic service was quoted at $50 a month, plus 40 cents a minute during peak times and 24 cents a minute during off-peak times! Oh yeah … and no free minutes with this brick either.
So how successful was the company with the first-to-market advantage? Well, we know the manufacturer, Motorola, was successful and is still producing cell phones today. As far as the carrier, that’s another story. Ameritech was actually born out of the AT&T dismemberment from the anti-trust monopoly lawsuits of the early 1980s. After a few years the company was gobbled up by SBC. If you didn’t know, SBC was later gobbled back up by AT&T. So, after being stripped from AT&T, it’s like the prodigal son has come home. Either that or it proves that the AT&T monopoly should have been allowed in the first place because most of the resources ended up back in their hands anyway!
So take a few minutes at some point today, especially when using your cell or next-generation smart phone, and remember the humble beginnings of this great tech toy. It isn’t every day that something this significant hits the airwaves. But today was that day – 25 years ago.
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