The first cell phone call in history was placed on April 3, 1973. Martin Cooper with Motorola placed the world’s first mobile phone call from the corner of 6th Ave. between 53rd and 54th in Manhattan.
The World’s First Mobile Phone Call
Motorola’s Martin Cooper called his rival, Joel Engel from Bell Systems to tell him that the race to perfect cellular tech was over. Motorola finished first. “Bell Systems” was a group of communications companies, led by the Bell Telephone Company. Bell Systems provided telephone services to much of the United States and Canada from 1877 to 1984.
The Motorola 8000X was the world’s first commercial portable cell phone. It cost consumers $3,995 at the time. The FCC approved the world’s first cellphone on September 21, 1983. Motorola made history when the FCC approved the Motorola 8000X.
What did the first cellphone service cost?
A post from Tom’s Hardware says that the original cost for mobile phone service was around $45.00 per month and included 0 minutes. Every call was billed at $0.45 cents per minute. These rates did not include long distance costs or roaming costs if you went outside your metro area. Long distance costs billed at an additional $0.25 per minute and roaming charges were either $0.95/ minute to roam to a different carrier or “only” $0.69/ per minute if roaming to your same carrier.
When were cellphones created?
The World’s First Cellphone Call through a “car phone” was placed on October 2, 1946. The caller used Illinois Bell Telephone Company’s new “car radiotelephone service”. These first car phones weighed around 80 pounds and had very limited service.
Physicians started using pagers aka “Beepers” in the New York City area in 1950. Physicians carried a 7 oz pager that would receive phone messages within 25 miles of a single transmitter tower. The Reevesound Company manufactured this system and Telanswerphone ran operations.
In 1960, John Francis Mitchell created the first transistorized pager when he combined elements of Motorola’s walkie-talkie and automobile radio technologies.
How did cellphones get so popular?
The Motorola 8000X cellular telephone first became available in 1983. from then on, the public instantly recognized the cellphone as a major status symbol. If you owned a cellphone, you were definitely someone of major importance.
Top professionals, CEO’s and executives had cellphones so they always had access to immediate communication. If you saw someone with a cellphone or car-phone, they were very important.
Using the US Inflation Calculator, with today’s cost of inflation: a businessman on an out of town trip, using 1,000 minutes of long distance calls would cost $4,107.36 for that single month of phone service! Keep in mind: the same cellphone that cost $3,995 in 1983 would cost $9,680.78 in 2017!
As technology grows at an ever increasing pace, the world’s first cellphone now seems like a dinosaur. Even the most basic flip phones offer features like SMS messaging, Bluetooth connectivity and many offer GPS navigation as well.
Limited coverage is now becoming a thing of the past as well. We use the towers from every major carrier in the USA in an effort to provide the Best Cellular coverage in the USA. We’re in the process of launching Mobile Voice Over IP service so that phones on every network can place WiFi calls. These calls work even when you’re out of cellular service (for example: in another country).
We’ve come a long way since the World’s First Cellphone Call! It’s exciting to be a part of the major jumps in global communication. Big things are coming!