We Could Have Had Cell Phones 40 Years Earlier

The holdup was not technology, but government. What else do we not have because of Washington?

Everyone older than Millennials remembers expensive long distance, wired landlines, phone company monopolies, bad service, phone booths, even (ack!) party lines. It was better than smoke signals, but it was vastly inferior to what we take for granted today.

The problem is, you could have had today about four decades sooner, with all the convenience, cost reduction and related economic growth that would have come with it. The holdup was not technology: it was (surprise surprise) government.
 
What else do we not have because of Washington? -- RDM

by Thomas W. Hazlett
June 21, 2017

The basic idea of the cellphone was introduced to the public in 1945 – not in Popular Mechanics or Science, but in the down-home Saturday Evening Post. Millions of citizens would soon be using "handie-talkies," declared J.K. Jett, the head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Licenses would have to be issued, but that process "won't be difficult." The revolutionary technology, Jett promised in the story,…