While Canadians are celebrating Thanksgiving, the Wireless History Foundation is hosting a dinner in Chicago this evening, marking the 25th anniversary of the first cellular mobile phone call which was made October 13, 1983 down the road at Soldier Field.
We have come a long way since the days of phones mounted in the trunks of our cars, evolving into phones carried in a shoulder bag.
And let’s not forget that major leap forward with the development of the classic Motorola brick-phone – the DynaTAC 8000X – which was approved by the FCC just 3 weeks earlier, on September 21, 1983. That phone, weighing in at 28 ounces, seemed nearly indestructible. I recall magazine ads in the 80’s that celebrated its ability to survive fire and water damage which sure beats the heck out of today’s phones (which frequent readers of mine know just don’t float).
Andrew Seybold made an interesting observation when reflecting on the first 25 years of cellular service:
I often meet new, young companies or talk to executives at one of the larger companies who are telling me about something new that, in reality, was new in the 1980s or early 1990s and did not make it in the marketplace. Some of these ideas can be and are being dusted off and put forward again now that times are different. Network coverage is far better than it was in those days, devices cost less, service costs far less and we have two things we really didn’t have back then: wireless broadband and the Internet.
Which applications from the past are now getting ready for prime time re-release today?
Who would have or could have thought that mobile wireless service would be such a disruptive force – not only on the telecom industry, but on the way business is conducted and society itself?
What will the next 25 years bring?
Update [October 13, 1:20 pm]
Good story by Alana Semuels in today’s LA Times called An evolution from talk to text.