We could have cell phones decades ago

And the Federal Communications Commission is to blame

The idea of ​​a cell phone was presented to the public in 1945 - and not in the magazines Popular Mechanics or Science, but even in the regular Saturday Evening Post. J.C.Jett, head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), announced that millions of people would soon be using "handheld radios." They will need to be licensed, but it "will be easy." Revolutionary technology, as promised Jett, take shape in a few months.

But permission to implement the project will not receive. The government will not allocate a frequency range for the implementation of engineers' idea of ​​a “cellular radio” until 1982, and licenses to operate will not be issued for another seven years. Wow bureaucratic delay.

Primitive phones and spectrum accumulation

Before mobile phones there was a mobile phone service, MTS [non-relatives - approx. trans.]. This technology, launched in 1946, required unwieldy and expensive equipment — the transceiver would take up the whole trunk of a sedan — and the network’s carrying capacity had severe limitations. Initially, the largest MTS markets had no more than 44 channels. In 1976, the Bell System mobile network in New York could accommodate 545 subscribers. And even with the exorbitant cost of subscribing to it, there were huge queues.
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Cellular networks were a brilliant way to radically expand the service. A single market was divided into cells, in each of which a base station was installed. These stations, often located on towers to improve the likelihood of being in the direct line of sight of mobile phone users, could receive wireless signals and transmit them. The base stations were connected together, usually by wires, and connected to networks that provided the good old telephone service.

The benefits of architecture were significant. Mobile radios could use less energy because they only needed to reach the nearest base station, not the phone at the other end of the city. This not only prolonged the life of the battery, it allowed the programs to remain in their area and not clog other cells. The connection with one cell would be transferred to another, neighboring, and then the next, while the user moves in space. Additional capacity was achieved through frequency reuse, from cell to cell. Cells could be divided, reaching even greater capacity. In the MTS system, each conversation took up the entire frequency available on the market. Only a few hundred conversations could take place at a time. A system of cells would create thousands of small cells and support hundreds of thousands of simultaneous conversations.

When AT & T wanted to start implementing the idea in 1947, the FCC rejected it, considering that the spectrum should be used for other services that are not related to “convenience or luxury” by their nature. This view of service — a niche service for a tiny user base — existed until the second half of the 1980s. Terrestrial Mobile Communications, a general category that also includes cellular communications, was very low on the FCC's list of priorities. In 1949, she was allocated only 4.7% of the spectrum in a suitable range. Broadcasting television was given 59.2%, and a quarter for the needs of the government.

Television was the mission of the FCC, and land mobile communications were some kind of fun. But Americans could simultaneously watch all the programs on television in the 1960s, and use cell phones. However, television was assigned a much larger spectrum than it had ever used, with vast desert bands with no busy frequencies, which blocked mobile communications for longer than a generation.

How empty was this spectrum? At 210 television markets in America, 81 channels provided television, and a total of 17010 stations appeared. Of these, the FCC planned to authorize 2002 television stations in 1952. By 1962, only 603 were broadcast in the United States. At the same time, broadcasters zealously defended idle bands. When supporters of mobile communications tried to gain access to the rarely used UHF band, the broadcasters threw a frenzy at the commission, constantly claiming that mobile service was an inefficient use of the band.

It may seem surprising that they defended vacant frequencies with such determination. Considering that commercial broadcast licenses were seriously limited - they were enough to support only three national networks - they would have to consider a large number of unused channels as a threat. What if the lawmakers had seriously bothered to increase competition? Compression of the television band, which could occur due to the allocation of additional frequencies for mobile phones, could protect existing broadcasters from future competition. Why did they oppose him?

Answer: Broadcasting companies believed that they have a strong enough veto to prevent the emergence of competing stations. At the same time, they valued the possible cost of unused ranges. This decision paid off - years later, unoccupied frequencies were given out to existing broadcasters, free of charge, during the transition to digital television.

Delay recipe

Meanwhile, MTS earned on license recipients called public radio carriers (RCC). The government sought to issue licenses only for two mobile operators - usually it was AT & T and the second, to a lesser competitor. The FCC also distributed licenses for “private land mobile communications” to non-communications companies for internal wireless use. This allowed, for example, the airline to manage the work with luggage at the airport, the freight train to check the paths allocated to it, or the workers on the offshore oil platform to communicate with company employees located in the head office.

In 1968, there were 62,000 RCCs, divided almost equally between AT & T and 500 tiny competitors. Licenses for private land mobile communications occupied a much larger part of the range (about 90%), and more phones took part in them. But compared to 326 million mobile customers in 2012, both of these low-tech services were fleas compared to elephants.

The RCC actively fought cellular communications, reasonably fearing that it would destroy their insignificant and low-profit activities. They had a powerful ally in the face of Motorola, at the time - an advanced company in the field of wireless technology. RCC and private operators were excellent customers for Motorola, as they bought radio stations of several thousand dollars each. An antitrust decree banned the sale of mobile radios in 1956 to AT & T's main rival, Motorola, AT & T. Protecting its dominant position in the market meant protecting customers from competitors, so Motorola worked to keep the cell phone revolution going.

AT & T Bell Labs conceived and developed cellular technology. But no matter how scientists were captured by the idea of ​​mobile phones, the company enjoyed a very profitable monopoly position in the field of ground communications. AT & T was convinced that mobile services would not significantly increase corporate sales, and therefore did not push the technology as aggressively as they could. Because of this, opponents of cellular communication have successfully influenced regulators for many years: formally, AT & T requested permission to deploy mobile communications in 1958, but the FCC did not respond to this request until 1968.

In 1970, the agency finally agreed to allocate some of the spectrum for the new service. She proposed to free up space by moving the TV station down from channels 70 to 83, and also singled out several unused frequencies. But the problem was far from complete resolution. From 1970 to 1982, cellular technology was seized by the whirlpool of legal chaos, and suffered from lawmaking, constant reappraisals and court decisions. A study from 1991, published by the National Economic Research Association, stated that “if the FCC immediately began issuing licenses after a positive decision in 1970, then licenses for cellular communications would be issued as early as 1972, and the systems could start working in 1973. But many businesses had the benefit of delaying the work of the FCC.

Marty Cooper, Motorola’s vice president, made his first cell phone call in 1973. He could have made it from a pocket phone. Motorola lawyers made their calls, lobbying bureaucrats from the FCC to prevent the construction of cellular networks. Motorola hurt herself: it could become a leading player in the new market. By 2006, it was the second largest mobile phone vendor in the world, with sales exceeding 200 million units per year.