INDIANAPOLIS — When mobile phones first came to Indianapolis, it was a technology seemingly reserved for the wealthy.
Phones were priced anywhere from $1,000 to $1,900.
But in 1990, that began to change.
Prices of cellular phones dropped to between $600 and $1,200, and about 40,000 Hoosiers had mobile phones that year.
While the phones were mobile, they were hardly portable.
Former RTV6 consumer reporter Barbara Boyd visited a GTE Mobilenet store in Jan. 1990.
Employees demonstrated the latest technology.
The cellular phones, or car phones, came in three styles:
- Mounted - A cellular phone you could have installed in your vehicle.
- Bagged - A cellular phone similar to the mounted model was placed inside a bag which could be carried around.
- Handheld - (Think Zack Morris' phone) A bulky, less powerful phone that was truly mobile.
Using a mobile phone wasn’t cheap either.
It cost 16 cents per minute from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. and 45 cents per minute from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
