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From: jill@midway.uchicago.edu (jill holly hansen)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Cellular Marketing
Message-ID: <11111@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 20 Aug 90 15:33:20 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 584, Message 1 of 12


In article <11010@accuvax.nwu.edu> wybbs!ken@sharkey.cc.umich.edu (Ken
Jongsma) writes:

: I'm beginning to suspect that cellular phones have no basis in
: reality, as we know it. If this country gets any closer to recession,
: a lot of people trying to get rich off of cellualar are going to be in
: for a rude shock.

: Consider the following print ad I saw recently: A person sitting in an
: airport terminal, talking to someone on a cellular phone. The blurb
: below: "Think of how much more productive you could be with a cellular
: phone."

: Uh, what's wrong with this picture? Let's see. I could spend .60+/min
: to use my cellular phone (plus roaming rates, etc), or I could pick up
: the pay phone right behind me and spend .25/min or less.

The poster seems to make making two statements:

1) "cellular phones have no basis in reality"
2)  pay phones are cheaper than cellular phones

The second point is correct, while bogus. The first point is just
plain bogus.

1) "cellular phones have no basis in reality"

Do you remember when hand-held calculators were introduced in the
early 70s?  They then cost at least $100 for units with limited
functions, and many of my colleagues couldn't understand why I could
pay that much when a slide rule did the job just as well. Cell phones
started out at $3,000; now you can get a transportable for $100 that
you can leave under the front seat of your car for emergencies.  In a
few years, cell phones *are* going to be as ubiguitous as pocket
calculators.  And that means that *someone* is going to do well if not
get rich.

2) pay phones are cheaper than cellular phones

Certainly true. However, when I am stuck in an airport with my garment
bag, my brief case, and my envelope full of 11 x 14 documents that I
*need* to refer to when calling back to Chicago to discuss changes in
the client's specs, I certainly don't want to have to do all this
business from a payphone in a noisy hallway.

Admittedly, I would rather make such a call from an quiet office, but
failing that, I can park myself in an unused airport waiting area or
at a restaurant table, spead my papers out around me, and then do my
business on my cell phone.  Considering that a business trip easily
costs upwards of $200-$400/day exclusive of air fare, the roaming fees
for the cell call are a small matter.

Then, when I get back to O'Hare, instead of waiting for a payphone to
check in with voice mail, I can grab a cab and do business as we creep
down the Kennedy.

Productive? I would like to believe so.


     Jill Holly Hansen  
jill@midway.uchicago.edu


[Moderator's Note: Your mention of the high prices of the early
calculators brought back some nostalgia. I bought a TI-58 and a TI-59
programmable calculator from Texas Instruments in 1976. They cost
almost five hundred dollars each! That included the little printer
device you mounted underneath the calculator. And my very first 'home
computer' was the Ohio Scientific 'Challenger', model C-1-P. It had
all of 4 K-bytes of ram. I got it early in 1977, and it cost a mere
six hundred dollars. I converted it to 8 K ram and installed a 'lower
case chip' by bravely following the instructions in some hobbyist
magazine I found. My friend bought an Apple II with 64 K a couple
years later and I wondered, what do you need *that much* ram for? :)  PAT]