Interesting retrospective of Motorola

[Carl WA1KPD]

http://go.bloomberg.com/tech-deals/2012-05-25-motorolas-history-lesson-for-google/


Carl
/KPD

[WA3VJB]

Good write, thanks Carl.

My area, metropolitan DC, and Chicago were the first two cellular telephone markets in the world, and I had one of the earliest handheld models, as well as a "bag phone," remember them?

I kept my analog Motorola "brick phone" long after the first digital class of successors hit the market, for just the reason cited -- it sounded a LOT better than the "StarTAC" that my wife had. 

Eventually the time division formulas improved, audio quality peaked, but now it has declined again as people use Bluetooth, hands-free connections with the degradation from a 2nd RF path plus noisy environment.

[Opcom]

I kept the analog FM brick car-phone until forced off it by AT$T jacking up the monthly fee to force everyone off. That phone was in a van with the ant. in the roof and it would reach a base almost 30 miles away. Irving, TX to Forth Worth. Minutes cost money back then too. I miss the human-being-sized handset. Maybe a good modern accessory product would be a full size bluetooth handset complete with keypad, with a piece of iron in it for weight.

[ke7trp]

When we had to go into the Copper mines to repair fibre links, we took a motorola brick with us clear into the early 2000s.  None of the current model cell phones worked into the mines and down in the pits.  Some of those mines where 75 miles of off road driving from the front gate to the work site.  Those brick phones worked. We could call each other from each end of a single mode 1 or 2 mile link and troublshoot.

Interesting article.

 

[k4kyv]

Remember when it was somewhat of a status symbol to have a cellular "carphone"? Novelty companies sold little mag-mount or adhesive fake antennas with the squiggly wire for a few bucks, for those who wanted to impress their friends but lacked the wherewithal to actually have a phone installed in their car.

Of course, with analogue FM, anyone with a scanner or regular receiver could tune in the calls. That prompted the cellular industry to successfully lobby congress to pass the onerous "Electronic Communications Privacy Act", which for the first time since World War I, gives the FCC the purported authority to regulate radio reception, as well as transmission.  The FCC can't very well regulate the laws of physics, but this still allowed the cell phone companies to prominently place a claim in their advertising that users of these "phones" (in reality full-duplex two-way radios) had nothing to worry about; they were afforded the "same protection under the wire-tapping laws" as with regular land line telephones. Now that cell phones have gone digital and interception by outside parties armed with scanners has become a moot point, the law is nevertheless still on the books, and it is illegal to market and sell receivers that cover certain frequency ranges, and some have even gone so far as to claim that it is illegal to modify your own receiver to cover those frequencies.  Such nonsense-laws tend to stay on the books for ever; one more little freedom down the toilet.