Calling from the road.

• Author: Beck, Bill
• Position: Cellular phones

Cellular phoning is 10 years old, and there's a lot more to come.

America celebrated a birthday of sorts this past October. It was just 10 years ago that the first cellular telephone made its appearance on the national scene.

Since the first call was made on an Oki cellular telephone in October 1983, millions of Hoosiers and other Americans have discovered the advantages of being able to call from the car, the golf course and just about anywhere else a portable phone can be toted.

Not that it hasn't been a bumpy ride. Those early models were hardly portable, and battery life for what the industry calls "bag phones" was considerably less than what the technology promised. The cost of installing equipment--especially in the car--was a barrier to market entry, and the cost of service itself, as much as 50 cents a minute or more, slowed the spread of cellular technology to the masses. Also, it was the early 1990s before it became possible to call from anywhere to anywhere in Indiana.

But now, 10 years after the first call, many of those early impediments to cellular acceptance have been swept away. The equipment is getting smaller and less expensive, the costs of service are stabilizing and heading down, and more technological breakthroughs are on the horizon. Overall, some 13 million Americans are now subscribers to some kind of cellular-communication service.

Douglas Stephens, market manager for the Southern Indiana area for United States Cellular in Evansville, notes that the initial problems inherent to cellular phones "are being resolved. We're now seeing true, pocket-sized phones on the market. And they now have an ample amount of battery life."

Stephens says that the industry "has always looked at the business as a telephone away from the land-based telephone." Now, Stephens adds, with the addition of computer, facsimile and modem capacity, we're seeing "a lot more of the pure portable office. There's always been that vision."

Bill Wheeler, president and general manager of Cellular One in Indianapolis, points out that "the systems work better. They provide more coverage and increased clarity. The actual technology has increased dramatically. As far as coverage goes, you can use the phones anywhere, on all major highways in the U.S."

Owned by BellSouth, Cellular One was the third cellular-communications system in the U.S. when it started up in February 1984. Wheeler oversees company facilities in Indianapolis, Anderson, Bloomington...