Editor’s Note: Welcome to our coverage of 25 years in wireless. RCR Wireless News is celebrating with a package of stories detailing the advances of the past three decades. For full coverage please visit RCRWireless.com/25years.
When Nextel started to roll out their iDEN network back in 1995 we got handsets (remember those bricks?) through my employer to evaluate the technology. Mostly they were used in business hours but I used to borrow one from an associate for weekends and share it with my wife and kids to get their opinions. It was great when we had two kids at different softball games at the same time, so we could exchange play-by-plays in real time and it generated a lot of interest in this new technology. My wife got to really like the PTT feature. One evening she advised me that she had decided to make the leap and purchase a cell phone and wondered if I could get her a Nextel phone.
Thinking of the potential for endless interruptions, I stupidly replied without thinking of where this would take me, “No dear, not until we invent Push-to-Listen.” She made no comment, but the next night when I came home from work she had a standard cellphone from a competitive service and it was not until the contract expired that she allowed me to move her to Nextel and a further year before she would use PTT. I never again used the expression “Push-to-Listen” within range of her hearing.
– David Baird, Motorola
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Some of my fondest memories are from the late ’80s and early ’90s when we were trying to establish CDMA as a viable wireless technology. The things we had to do, the places we went! We were the guys upsetting the order of things; there were even cartoons of a few of us that characterized us as the “CDMA kids.” Perhaps the biggest challenge came from the chairman of CTIA Presidents’ group, John Stupka, then president of the very-powerful Southwestern Bell. John, now a long-time friend, was an adamant supporter of TDMA. At one point, CTIA directed TIA to not standardize CDMA. It was a devastating blow. Fortunately, a few months later, I was able to arrange a meeting at the Ritz Carlton Bar in Washington, D.C., between John and Sue Swensen, the president of Pactel Cellular. The setting was perfect. John, being the ever-polite gentleman, was impressed and surprised by the always-gracious Sue. He agreed to have Sue co-chair the CTIA technology committee with him. Sue then became our secret weapon inside CTIA, which eventually opened the door for the acceptance of CDMA by CTIA. This small meeting was truly a turning point for the industry.
– Perry LaForge, CDMA Development Group
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When I think about the beginning of the wireless industry as we know it today, there’s one memory that trumps all the rest. I’m from Texas, and I can still remember barreling down the highway in my Cadillac Eldorado talking on my CB radio. This was a big deal at the time. Truckers were the only folks who really used them, but the reassurance of knowing I was never out of touch had a big impact on how Aeris came about and how we offer value to the wireless industry today. Fast forward from the ’80s to 1998 when Aeris Communications launched the first M2M data network, which at the time we called the Microburst Network. All of a sudden, machines could talk to each other. These early applications opened up the market to the advanced telematics, real-time traffic, and smart meter solutions we have today. Over and out.
-Dick Gossen, Aeris Communications
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Is the wireless industry as young as it feels? It has been around for 25 years already. That is amazing. New features like the iPhone and live TV and movies and Internet access and GPS and banking make it all feel so new. That’s the beauty of this industry. 25 years ago it was new, expensive and analog and it had to be installed in the car. So many small cellphone carriers were competing. The service was not great, but that was beside the point. We could do something we could never do before. We could make a call from anywhere. There were few customers compared to today, but the future looked so bright. The cellphone industry is continually changing and new technology leaves us constantly saying “WOW.” We don’t see the finish line either. We are somewhere in the middle of the race. The industry continues to change and evolve and grow. The revenues get bigger and so do the companies after waves of consolidation. May we all be here in 2033, a little older and maybe wiser. And the cellphone industry will be bigger and better and growing faster than ever.
– Jeff Kagan, Wireless and Telecom industry analyst
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You always want to look back on your career and feel like you really made a difference. I’m not so sure this is one of those occasions. In 1983, I was a member of the I.T. staff for AMPS of Illinois. My main responsibility at that time was to ensure the cellular billing system was ready for production when the trial completed and commercial service was launched. For some unknown reason, it was decided four members of the department would be allowed to attend the kickoff in person. We were a five-person department, so a lottery was held to determine who would go. As fate would have it, I (the newest member of the team) was selected to stay behind and watch the shop while the rest enjoyed the festivities.
The premise of the big event was that there would be a race to see who would be able to make the first call to Alexander Graham Bell’s grandson in Germany. The race would have a LeMans style start, with the participants running from a starting point about 20 yards away to a group of cars in the parking lot of Soldier Field in Chicago. Upon reaching their assigned vehicle, they were to start the car and place the call with some sort of a prize awarded to the one successfully placing the call.
Since I was not selected to attend the event itself, the department director asked me if I would assist in a very important way – to drive her car down the day before and participate in a dry run to ensure there were no technical glitches on launch day. I don’t think anyone knew whether or not the five or 10 cars would even be able to place a call from the same location at the same time. Early cellular was kind of like that. I was happy to oblige and everything went well. But I do recall being told that the actual event needed to be restarted because one vehicle’s battery died.
In any event, I had a good, long career with AMPS, Ameritech, SBC, and finally Cingular. I didn’t make it long enough to come full circle back to AT&T again, but I loved every minute of the ride!
– Tom Baruffi
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After retiring with 21 years in telecommunications in the USAF, I was working for a nationwide paging company in Dallas. All employees had pagers with voicemail, and many had cellphones (some company provided) to answer their pages. Equipment manufacturers sent candidate products to be evaluated for purchase. Candidate pagers were tested in an office on the top floor of the corporate headquarters two doors down from a paging transmitter.
– T Bushmaker
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