Wireless wonks celebrate 35th anniversary of first cell call

April 3 marks the 35th anniversary of the world’s first cellular phone call, and to celebrate, former NFL hero Steve Largent has presented a priapic monolith to the man who made that call back in the spring of 1973. Largent is now the president and CEO of the CTIA wireless association, and this morning, at the association's …

[Paul M.]

No USA, no mobiles

Let us salute America's contribution to mobile telephony. Without the global leadership and pace-setting standards openly and generously given to the world, (such as IDEN and AMPS) we'd all be using landlines all the time.

Today, I eagerly await your WiMAX.

Thank you, America.

[Jón Frímann Jónsson]

European mobiles

According to this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_Mobile_Telephone) web page, the NMT system was just about to be ready when they made there first call over in America.

So even if America was the first, it came darn close to be the second one. But this is just the first automatic mobile network, the manual mobile networks had been around for quite some time before 1973.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Jón Frímann Jónsson

Amen, Jon,

Nothing new under the sun. Just incremental developments.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apt.

I guess a "priapic monolith" is just the thing to celebrate a "seminal cell call" with.

[Anon999]

Actually the first mobile phones were introduced in 1971.

Typical US assumptions.

Finns introduced ARP (short for AutoRadioPuhelin) in 1971, which would be two years before Motorola.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoradiopuhelin

[Steve Oliver]

The usual stuff....

They'll be telling us they broke Enigma next......