Mobile Telephone History ---- Pages: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (Packet switching) (Next topic: Standards)

Improved Mobile Telephone Service Price Tables

 

Compare these rates to your present cellular bill. Note that 35MHz service was done away by 1988, those frequencies re-assigned to paging duties. Pacific Bell and many other telcos ended IMTS service by 1995. The tables below show the increase Pac Bell would soon charge for the new IMTS service, the old rates were for a simpler system. Current Rate means MTS, New Rate means IMTS.

Basic Service (per month)	Current Rate (per month)	New Rate (per month)
1982 Dollars
35MHz	$15.00	$25.00
150MHz	18.00	25.00
450MHz	12.00	17.00
2001 Dollars
35MHz	27.67	46.11
150MHz	33.20	46.11
450MHz	22.13	31.36

Air Time Charges on Peak 8:00 A.M. to 8:00 P.M. Monday Through Friday
1982 Dollars
	Current Rate	New Rate
1st minute or fraction	$0.25	$0.50
Next four minutes per minute	.40	.70
Over five minutes per minute	.80	1.05
2001 Dollars
1st minute or fraction	.46	.92
Next four minutes per minute	.74	1.29
Over five minutes per minute	1.48	1.94

Air Time Charges Off Peak 8:00 P.M to 8:00 A.M. Monday Through Friday, All Day Saturday, Sunday, and Holidays
1982 Dollars
	Current Rate	New Rate
1st minute or fraction	$0.20	$0.40
Next four minutes per minute	.20	.45
Over five minutes per minute	.40	.55
2001 Dollars
1st minute or fraction	.37	.74
Next four minutes per minute	.37	.83
Over five minutes per minute	1.74	1.01

Pacific Bell also went to an immediate pricing policy, whereby your airtime counted as soon as a connection was made. If your office took ten rings to answer the phone, well, you paid for those rings. And busy signals.

Here's a nifty present day dollar convertor:

http://minneapolisfed.org/research/data/us/calc/

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