|
Vintage Telephony and Telecomms Vintage Telephones, Telephony and Telecomms Equipment |
|
Thread Tools |
4th Sep 2011, 11:44 pm | #21 | ||
Dekatron
Join Date: May 2006
Location: Invercargill, New Zealand
Posts: 3,457
|
Re: Who sold the first mobile phones?
Telecom NZ's cellular network (using AMPS) was launched in 1987 in Auckland - by the time it came to Invercargill a few years later I think the phones (the likes of the DynaTAC) were over NZ$1000.
By the time I got my first phone at work in 1995 (MicroTAC 1950, replaced by an Ultra Lite a year later) the special discounted Ernst & Young plan was only about $60/mo and $0.60/min for calls. Next year, 25 years after cellphones were launched in NZ, the last remaining part of the NZ AMPS lineage will disappear when the Telecom CDMA-1xRTT network is turned off. They've been through AMPS, D-AMPS (both turned off in 2007) and CDMA and are now switching completely to UMTS/HSPA. Quote:
Quote:
If they work with a SIM card then they can't be older than around 1991 or so when GSM started to appear. Older networks like AMPS used an ESN programmed into the phone to identify it. |
||
5th Sep 2011, 9:29 pm | #22 |
Hexode
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, UK.
Posts: 329
|
Re: Who sold the first mobile phones?
I used to have a Motorola 8500X 'brick' phone, which I bought for £5 from a radio rally in about 1995 complete with leather carrying case & spare battery. It was the best phone I ever owned, it worked anywhere, even in the Fens and if you were in a weak signal area, all you got was background noise, rather than the modern digital ones which just drop the call without warning. I'd still use it now only the analogue frequencies are no longer available. Still, I did manage to sell it to a collector for £80...
Mark. Last edited by Brian R Pateman; 6th Sep 2011 at 12:19 pm. Reason: See Rule B8. |
5th Sep 2011, 10:31 pm | #23 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: East Yorkshire, UK.
Posts: 3,986
|
Re: Who sold the first mobile phones?
Hi Mark, sounds like you had a bargan there. I have one I use to put an 02 card in when I did displays at steam ralies, but as you say no more. John.
|
8th Sep 2011, 4:25 pm | #24 |
Pentode
Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK.
Posts: 163
|
Re: Who sold the first mobile phones?
I've got a couple of 8500X in my collection but both need new aerials as the rubber has degraded
|
26th Sep 2011, 8:27 pm | #25 |
Tetrode
Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, UK.
Posts: 57
|
Re: Who sold the first mobile phones?
|
2nd Nov 2011, 12:25 pm | #26 |
Retired Dormant Member
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Coventry, Warwickshire, UK.
Posts: 339
|
Re: Who sold the first mobile phones?
First one I saw was issued to our mobile engineers to help with circuit line ups. That was in the days of Post Office Telephones in the late 70's. Don't know who made it. Has three channels with an indicator if channel was in use. Makes the Motorola bricks look small. Handset/radio unit was about the size of a test tele set and battery two-three times that.
|