Comment by wat10000
15 hours ago
I saw a story once, which may well be completely made up, about why AT&T got out of the cell phone business. They had a research project, but reliability was an issue. They couldn't see a way to do better than 1 dropped call in 10,000. Their standard for POTS at the time was 1 in 2 billion.
Seeing that the tech would never be good enough, they sold off the whole thing for cheap. Years later, they bought it back for way, way more money because they desperately needed to get into the cell phone business that was clearly headed to the moon.
I totally understand the pride they had in the reliability of their system, but it turns out that dropped calls just aren't that big of a deal when you can quickly redial and reconnect.
Seems a little sus. AT&T basically created the cellular mobile phone, and built up an analog, then digital system (D-AMPS/TDMA). AT&T sort of sold out the mobile business in 2004 to Cingular (BellSouth) because TDMA was a dead end. They then bought BellSouth back in 2006 and carried on with CDMA.
Those old phones had a long range. It was hard to make small ones because the old AT&T towers were much farther apart, up to 40km. Meanwhile, their competitors focused on smaller coverage areas (e.g. 2km or less for PCS) and better tech (CDMA), and it seemed to pay off.
Early cell phones were so limited it's sort of amazing they gained adoption. They were big (literally the size of a brick), heavy, and expensive. Battery life was poor. The EM radiation was possibly harmful. Due to all of that most mobile phones were permanently installed and could only be used in a car. Plans were either pay-by-the-minute or had pre-paid minutes with expensive charges if you went over. Roaming off your local network was crazy expensive... somthing like dollars per minute. Texting wasn't even a thing at the time; most phones only had a 10-character display. Voice quality was poor and calls often dropped or would not connect.
It wasn't until phones shrank and service got cheaper, that consumer adoption took off. Businesses and early adopters will pay even if the product is inconvenient and costly to use, as long as the benefit exceeds the cost.
This is a minor detail, but the "AT&T" that bought BellSouth in 2006 was the AT&T formerly known as SBC which bought the husk of Ma Bell and rebranded itself, i.e. the AT&T we have today.
Yes, AT&T was hollowed out because long lines was the family jewel and it became commodified in the late 90s/early 2000s by overinvestment in competitors.