13 October 1983 - First commercial cell phone network went online

Digital Innovation Days

With more mobile connections than humans in the world today, it is difficult to imagine a time without cell phones. However, it was nearly 4 decades ago, on 13th October, 1983 when the first commercial cell phone was launched by Ameritech, which is now a part of AT&T. While the world of cellular connections has reached 5G technology today, it started with a simple 1G network.

Advanced Mobile Phone System or APMS went online in Chicago first where people could make and receive calls. The first call, interestingly, was made by Bob Barnett, the president of Ameritech, who called the grandson of Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone.

However, this was not the beginning of cell phone technology. In fact, even the APMS was under development for nearly 15 years and a mobile call was made on a prototype network about a decade before the first commercial cell phone network was launched. This is a large amount of time and is rightly indicative of the complications in achieving this major technological milestone. Hardware, software, and radio frequency issues had to be repeatedly troubleshot.

The launch of APMS was a historic moment in the domain of technology: it laid the foundation of what has become a $1.08 trillion industry today and all the advanced features we enjoy in our cell phones. The introduction of 2G allowed text messages to be sent, 3G brought the ability to transmit data over the internet, and 4G was responsible for faster speed. The latest of these advancements, 5G, now offers lower latency and higher bandwidth, even enabling real-time data transmission. Today, cell phone networks are expected to continue to evolve, introducing breakthrough technologies, but there is a high probability that none of this would have been possible had the APMS not introduced its 1G cell phone network commercially.