Cell Neutrality

SCENE:  Walll Street, – 1983.  A group of protesters – young activists from Slough Fnakes, Vermont – chant slogans in front of the Motorola headquasrters building, wielding protest signs; “Keep Cell Phones Democratic!”, “What do we want?  Cell Neutrality.  When do we want it?  Now!” and “Car Phones are a Public Utility”.   After a few moments, Ashton LIBRELLE climbs up on the soapbox.  

LIBRELLE:  What we seek is car phone neutrality.   We demand that the government treat car phones and suitcase phones as the public utility they truly are.   That way, in thirty years, your children will be able to buy a mobile phone like this (LIBRELLE holds up a 1984 Motoirola cell phone – the size of at World War II walkie talkie, that cost $10,000 in 2017 dollars plus $1,000 a month and $4 a minute for talk times) – and their children, and their children’s children, as long as Motorola remains unchallenged atop the car phone industry.  Nobody will be able, using just more money, to buy a better phone!

(Hank MERG chimes in):  But if you treat the budding cellular communiations industry like a utility, there’ll be no impetus for someone like, say, Steve Jobs or Victor Droid, to respond to the market demand and build device that, before long, will not only do everything the phone your holding does thousands of times better, but do it for about one percent of the inllation adjusted cost.  Indeed, in 24 years, I predict that non-profits will be giving away phones that are millions of times more powerful per dollar, and criminals will buy them to use once and throw away!.

LIBRELLE:  (Scoffing as the young people fromSlough Fnakes laugh uproariously)  Oh, it is to laugh!  The idea that phones will be a commodity, like Pet Rocks, or that technology will ever surpass what we see in front of us!   No, indeed; let us regulate car and suitcase phones like utilities, that they may ever be as successful as the public education system!

(The crowd erupts)_.

4 thoughts on “Cell Neutrality

  1. I had a car phone installed in the trunk, handset between the seats. Used it to call clients while driving to court, had a tape recorder to dictate notes of the conversation and reminders to myself to follow up. Replaced that car, got a bag phone to fill the same function.

    I liked them. They increased my productivity and clients were happier when I called back more quickly. I’d be satisfied if we still had them because then the teenaged girl driving her Mom’s mini-van in the lane next to me would be looking at the road, not staring at her phone texting her BFF, OMG. And for those few times when I take public transportation, I wouldn’t be listening to fat women shout in the phone “Where you at? No, I’m axing you, nome sane?”

  2. one of the reasons the US won the space race is that we opened up low earth orbit to commercial communications back in the early-mid 1960s.

  3. It has to metered somehow or you will never get capital allocated to make it fast and be a good value.

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