It was on the 9th of August 1981 that Australia’s first mobile call was made on Telecom’s original public mobile network. The car phone weighed a whopping 14kg, was half a metre big and cost $5000 at the time — around $17,000 in today’s terms. It could only store 16 numbers, and the best part: you were alerted of incoming calls by honking the car horn or flashing the headlights!
It was Telecom’s Managing Director, Bill Pollock, who made the first call over the PAMTS (or 007) network while driving through Melbourne. He called Telecom’s Chief Commissioner, Tom May, in Sydney. Back then, Telstra’s current Executive Director of Networks, Mike Wright, was a graduate engineer in 1981 and oversaw installation of the first mobile network exchange in Brisbane.
“We called the first Telstra network the 007 Network because that was the number range it used and while in today’s terms it was more like a ’Zero-G‘ network, it was the foundation of Australia’s modern mobile phone industry. In just 30 years we’re now building a 4G network, that’s five generations of mobile evolution so far in my career.”
How far we’ve come. More: Telstra Starts Selling 4G (LTE), But Won’t Reveal Speeds
Related: Check out this great Sale of the Century clip that Giz reader @Atilla found:
RufusLives
Tuesday, August 9, 2011 at 12:32 PMI like how the ad seems to encourage using the phone while driving… “Wasted traveling time becomes profitable time”
Aliasalpha
Tuesday, August 9, 2011 at 1:02 PMYeah but it was early days, who could have predicted that there might be driving difficulties arising from holding something the size of a cricket bat up to your ear?
Barry
Tuesday, August 9, 2011 at 12:43 PMLTE isn’t 4th Generation, at best it’s 3.5G. Why can’t people just say LTE network instead of 4G, which is incorrect.
Luke
Tuesday, August 9, 2011 at 12:46 PMBecause its easier to say 4G then 3.5G.
Sicarius123
Tuesday, August 9, 2011 at 3:07 PMIsn’t HSPA 3.5G?
Hence “Next G”?
Dan Miller
Tuesday, August 9, 2011 at 1:06 PMWonder if the coverage was better back then then what it is now? Would not of been a huge demand on the network as there is now. Who knew back that that all most everyone would have a mobile now.
Matt
Tuesday, August 9, 2011 at 1:31 PMIt would have been terrible back then.
attila
Tuesday, August 9, 2011 at 2:02 PMCan I commend to you all this 1987 clip from Sale of the Century, in which the prize case included two Telecom mobile phones:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnSujTOfo7w
I won’t spoil it too much, but suffice to say it also features a dwarf. Good times.
Adam
Tuesday, August 9, 2011 at 5:38 PMHaving used one of these, they were quite good but the range was limited in Brisbane due to the one base station on Mt coot-tha. This did mange to cover most of the city though.
You also had to own a large car because the equipment took up a large chuck of your boot space.