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Mobile Communications is one of many common carriers that are also applying for cellular radio licenses. The FCC plans to designate two for each city. One of the two everywhere will be a telephone company. A big winner will be American Telephone & Telegraph Co., which pioneered in development of the new technology. AT&T is already serving 2,000 mobile-phone customers with a network covering some 2,100 sq. mi. in a pilot project in Chicago, where regular cellular service will begin in November. The company has been granted licenses to build systems in six other cities: Boston, Buffalo, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Pittsburgh.
The potential market is enormous. Some 50,000 names are on waiting lists across the U.S. for the limited number of mobile phones that existing systems can handle. In New York City, for example, where New York Telephone Co. has only 700 mobile phones, the waiting time is ten years. By 1990, AT&T alone expects to construct systems in 35 cities and sign up 1.5 million customers. Telocator Network of America, the industry trade association, estimates that as many as 3 million mobile phones may be in use by 1990, up from 180,000 today. With rental fees and per-call charges averaging $125 a month, annual revenues could reach $5.4 billion.
At least initially, mobile phones will be too expensive for all but the best-heeled consumers. Mobile phones, generally installed in cars, will run from $1,500 to $2,500; completely portable ones are priced at $3,500 to $4,500. Monthly charges are expected to run from $150 to $180. But the cost will come down. Says Alan Reiter, editor of Telocator, a monthly magazine: "I think you're going to see people buying cellular phones instead of extensions within the next several years."
Maryland Hotel Developer Ralph Deckelbaum, 53, who has been using a portable phone on a trial basis for more than a year, says he is "tickled to death with it." But life has not been the same for his secretary of 22 years, Anna Belle Alderman. "It used to be that when he left, he was gone," she sighs. "Now he never leaves; he can talk to me every five minutes if he wants to. When he goes out on a construction job, he calls me while he's standing on one of the girders."
Some experts worry about the strain of staying in touch 24 hours a day. Marilyn Komechak, a Fort Worth psychologist who has clinically studied stress, believes that prolonged use of beepers produces anxiety and probably high blood pressure. "I have never seen anyone respond to a beep with a smile or a less than strident comment," she says.
Maybe so. But try to tell that to the parents of children who are patients of New Jersey Dentist Robert McGuire. When Junior gets in the chair, the parents are handed beepers so they can run errands, or stay out of the way, until the dentist is done. Or tell it to the Baltimore lawyer who makes telephone calls while driving to and from Annapolis, thus extending his billable hours. With the technology behind pagers and mobile telephones becoming increasingly available and inexpensive, the handy little devices promise—or is the word threaten?—to become ubiquitous.
—ByAlexanderL. Taylor III. Reported by Melissa August/Washington and Adam Zagorin/New York