On Mar 30, 12:25*pm, "Adam H. Kerman" wrote:

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

As I recall it, when cell phone service was finally authorized, there
was to be _two_ competing carriers in a region--one the traditional
wireline carrier, the other a newcomer. The analog cell phones of
that era supposedly could be switched beteween the A and B carrier,
though I think in practice very people did so.

Also, I do not believe the wire line carrier thought in traditional
terms. They set up subsidiaries that operated differently with a
different rate model. Obvious differences were that the cell phone
subscriber paid for incoming calls, and that timing ran from 'send' to
'end', not from answer to hangup. (This meant if you called someone
who took a while to answer, you were paying just to hear the phone
ring.)