Re: [Telecom] Analog cell-phone network going off air

hancock4@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Dec 27, 8:03 pm, Ken Abrams <harvest_t...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<hanco...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote

The earliest
cell phones were mounted in cars,
Not really.

The earliest "mobile phone" service used transceivers (made to look like a
phone) mounted in cars, but that service was not "cellular".

Actually I was speaking of _cellular_ phones, not the predecessor
system. When cellular phones first came out, IIRC, they were
generally available only as car mounted units. They were certainly
smaller than the predecessors, but still bulky. The portable "bricks"
were rare. The alternative was a bag phone which was cumbersome. But
it didn't take long for portable models to shrink down and car
installed models (and installation centers) ceased.

As other noted, the early cellular units were far more powerful than
later handsets. Presumably the number of cells within a region was
relatively small and the cells themselves relatively large. As demand
increased, they kept adding more towers and shrinking the cells.

I recall watching a rerun of the TV show "90210" and the character was
talking on his car cell phone, a handset connected by cord to the
dashboard. This at first seemed very strange to me until I realized
the episode was old and dated from the time cellphones were new and a
novelty.


Before cellular phones it was called "mobile" telephone service
because it was mounted in cars, as described elsewhere. This dated
from about 1948. At that time similar units were installed in deluxe
passenger trains.

A pioneer cell phone effort was the Metroliner train phones introduced
in 1969. These used a pioneer automated cell switching arrangement
and handoffs so that service was provided seamlessly between Jersey
City and Washington, even within the Baltimore tunnels (but not the
NYC Hudson tunnels). Previous posts discussed this in detail.


Others mentioned competing mobile telephone service _within_ Bell
System territories. I was not aware of that. Did those system
_seamlessly_ connect with the Bell Telephone network as did Bell
mobile phones? (The later generation of mobile phones had direct dial
in both directions.) So, users in the competing system had their own
direct phone numbers? This would represent a rare crack in the Bell
System monopoly.


***** Moderator's Note *****

The transition to cellular was much less painful for me than for
others: I sold the unit long before cellular started.

I would've thought under the old Bell System mobile telephone users
would've rented the radio set, as did other subscribers of Bell System
services. People had to buy the radio set?

Do you remember anything about the tarrifs for the old system in terms
of rates charged?

Would you recall how many watts the mobile unit put out?

I believe the old arrangement was that Motorola furnished the mobile
radio sets while the Bell System provided the service per an agreement
between the two companies. I don't know who provided the mobile base
stations or switching gear interfaces. This was a rare instance of
the Bell System using equipment not provided for by Western Electric,
although WE built plenty of mobile radios for the military. Motorola
got its start making car radios that were shielded from interferance
from the car's ignition system; at the time that was a big innovation
(thus the name "Motor").

I presume the old Bell mobile service was supported by the regular
Bell System personnel, not a separate subsidary? When I got my first
Bell Atlantic cell phone, I presumed it was supported that way but I
quickly found out the cell phone business was entirely separate. The
store personnel were clearly not the caliber of regular Bell System
people, none of that Vail tradition for them.

I know the few that I saw that were mounted in GTE company vehicles had
a phone number from their local switch or an office the IMTS equipment
installed. We could dial out and call most of the time, but in a couple
of areas you had to call the MTS operator and she would make the call, I
don't think they used the phone number, but a signaling system much like
the pagers of the time. It took me a bit of getting used to not having
dial tone when I first stated using a cell phone, but then having worked
in the CO I know that dial tone was not really needed, just to let the
caller know they could make a call, I learned that when we lost our
rial tone generators and we still could make calls.

--
The Only Good Spammer is a Dead one!! Have you hunted one down today?
(c) 2007 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot In Hell Co.


***** Moderator's Note *****

Subscribers to New England Telephone's IMTS offering could either rent
or own their mobile units. IIRC, the cost was about $80.00 per month
in 1974, but I owned my unit so renters would have paid more.

Competing systems were "compatible" in the sense that they had
dialable phone numbers, so N.E.T. customers could call a competitor's
subscriber and vice-versa, but it was an ordinary POTS call between
the two systems. Remember that IMTS predated computers and
computerized telephone exchanges, so the radio portion of the system
was, in effect, only an invisible extension cord between a subscriber
and the line equipment in the CO that served the IMTS system.

I don't know if the competing system had MTS or IMTS: it probably
varied from city to city, with competitors also providing paging, TAS,
and related services.

IIRC, the Motorola TLD-1000A I used put out about 50 watts. It had a
vacuum tube in its final amplifier stage, and a gigantic heat sink to
absorb the heat from the tube.

Each wireline company had eleven channels on VHF and 12 on UHF, but I
don't know what the allocations were for competitive MTS/IMTS
providers.

HTH.

Bill Horne
Temporary Moderator

.

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