
Cell Phone Technology Should Have Been Available After WWII - TheSpine
https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/cell-phone-technology-should-have-been-introduced-after-wwii-e3adcc4f79e4
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eesmith
Years ago I read several books by L. Neil Smith, a noted libertarian SF
author. His North American Confederacy series posited that if the early US had
been really libertarian (changing the Declaration of Independence to "derive
their just power from the _unanimous_ consent of the governed") then
technology and social rights would have been far in advance of what actually
happened.

(Eg, peaceful end to slavery in 1820, Moon colonies by the 1940s.)

This comes across as the same sort of libertarian fantasy.

Let's consider "the 37 year incubation of the cell phone".

As
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mobile_phones#The_c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mobile_phones#The_cellular_concept)
points out, there was more than just the proposal from the 1940s in order to
get cell phones:

> At this stage, the technology to implement these ideas did not exist, nor
> had the frequencies been allocated ...

> In all these early examples, a mobile phone had to stay within the coverage
> area serviced by one base station throughout the phone call, i.e. there was
> no continuity of service as the phones moved through several cell areas. The
> concepts of frequency reuse and handoff, as well as a number of other
> concepts that formed the basis of modern cell phone technology, were
> described in the late 1960s, in papers by Frenkiel and Porter.

Which means the "handie-talkies" were far different than what we think of now
for cellular technology.

The article argues that frequency allocation was the main issue, with fierce
resistance by the TV broadcast industry for changing the allocation, and with
internal inertia preventing new technology development.

To counter-balance that argument, we need only look outside the US. Again,
from Wikipedia at
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mobile_phones#Emerg...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mobile_phones#Emergence_of_automated_services)
:

> The first fully automated mobile phone system for vehicles was launched in
> Sweden in 1956. Named MTA (Mobiltelefonisystem A), ... MTA phones consisted
> of vacuum tubes and relays, and weighed 40 kilograms (88 lb). In 1962, an
> upgraded version called Mobile System B (MTB) was introduced. This was a
> push-button telephone, and used transistors and DTMF signaling to improve
> its operational reliability. In 1971 the MTD version was launched, opening
> for several different brands of equipment and gaining commercial success.
> ...

> In 1958 development began on a similar system for motorists in the USSR ...

> One of the first successful public commercial mobile phone networks was the
> ARP network in Finland, launched in 1971. ...

(Not bad for the 'innovation famine' of Europe, eh?)

So there were multiple attempts, in multiple regulatory regimes. If cell
phones were simple enough that we "should" have had them shortly after WWII,
then it would have been done elsewhere.

Which to me strongly suggests that the explanation given here is too facile.

