John Levine wrote:

Because the original mobile carriers were all subsidiaries of the
incumbent land line telephone companies, they thought in land-line
terms.

That's simply wrong. In each area there were two mobile (cellular in
US argot) franchises, A and B. The B franchise was awarded to a local
landline carrier, the A to someone else. In some areas the A carrier was
a landline carrier in a different part of the country, but in many cases,
notably McCaw Cellular, they were new specialist carriers.

You mean the guy who purchased MCI's wireless business and deployed
AT&T's technology in the license areas he bought? You're right. He's not
an ILEC, but he wasn't independent. Did the guy deploy any technology on
his own, or was he merely a speculator in radio spectrum licenses?

In North America, unlike in most other areas, mobile numbers are
integrated into the regular dial plan, there's no distinction in
numbering or pricing for calls to mobiles, and mobiles pay for both
incoming and outgoing calls.

There's a variety of arguments about why we did it that way. . . .

Another theory is that mobile pays means that we have number
portability between mobile and landline,

Really? Local number portability was a consideration in the early 1980's?

which will never happen in caller pays areas, and that since the mobile
customer is aware of the price of incoming and outgoing calls, the actual
price per minute (including the incoming calls which mobile users in
caller pays areas incorrectly think are "free") is among the lowest in
the world.