Beginning in January, 1985, I owned a Motorola Portable Phone aka "Brick" in the Detroit Metro area.. In addition, I had an optional Motorola in-vehicle drop-in mobile charger mounted on the vehicle 'hump'. The mobile mount included a direct connection to an external "cellular' antenna. The external antenna was a capacitive/inductive thru-the-glass connection to a cellular antenna cemented to the glass on the outside rear window. The usage rate was 50 cents/min. But, while a relatively expensive rate, yet somewhat competitive to the distance based multi-tier wired line network rates because the cellular was wide area -including SE Michigan. In fact, the Detroit cellular rate was more favorable than the 75 cents/min rate for costal cities. Carl Kolenda, RCA, Fellow
Marty is a brilliant engineer but, he did not invent an entire system. I was a Field Technical Rep for Motorola's National Telephone, Railroad, and Airline group. We had manual mobile systems that were interconnected to the telephone system and, the IMTS (Improved Mobile Telephone System 150/450MHz), which was fully automated and interconnected to the landline phone system. In fact, when I left Motorola to work for American Radio Telephone Service in Baltimore/Washington, the first cellular switch was a modified IMTS switch, and the RF system was licensed as experimental on 800MHz (not 900MHz) circa 1980. The "cellular" network was originally implemented in Germany operating on 500MHz. We were the non-wireline system and the wireline system was the "AMPS" system in Chicago. Our service went commercial under the brand Cellular One in 1984. It was eventually sold to the Washington Post for $54 million. We never dreamed the phones would be doing what they do today!
Beginning in January, 1985, I owned a Motorola Portable Phone aka "Brick" in the Detroit Metro area.. In addition, I had an optional Motorola in-vehicle drop-in mobile charger mounted on the vehicle 'hump'.
The mobile mount included a direct connection to an external "cellular' antenna. The external antenna was a capacitive/inductive thru-the-glass connection to a cellular antenna cemented to the glass on the outside rear window.
The usage rate was 50 cents/min. But, while a relatively expensive rate, yet somewhat competitive to the distance based multi-tier wired line network rates because the cellular was wide area -including SE Michigan.
In fact, the Detroit cellular rate was more favorable than the 75 cents/min rate for costal cities.
Carl Kolenda, RCA, Fellow
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Marty is a brilliant engineer but, he did not invent an entire system. I was a Field Technical Rep for Motorola's National Telephone, Railroad, and Airline group. We had manual mobile systems that were interconnected to the telephone system and, the IMTS (Improved Mobile Telephone System 150/450MHz), which was fully automated and interconnected to the landline phone system. In fact, when I left Motorola to work for American Radio Telephone Service in Baltimore/Washington, the first cellular switch was a modified IMTS switch, and the RF system was licensed as experimental on 800MHz (not 900MHz) circa 1980. The "cellular" network was originally implemented in Germany operating on 500MHz. We were the non-wireline system and the wireline system was the "AMPS" system in Chicago. Our service went commercial under the brand Cellular One in 1984. It was eventually sold to the Washington Post for $54 million. We never dreamed the phones would be doing what they do today!