Cellular Telephones and Pagers

7

The Role of the Regulatory Agencies

Earlier we discussed the beginnings of communication without wires. Since the nineteenth century, the telecommunications industry has grown far beyond Marconi’s, or almost anyone else’s, imagination. Today the industry performs a multitude of tasks, some of which we have talked about, that were not previously envisaged. But even in the early days, as businesspeople and the general public learned what this new communications medium could accomplish, the industry began to grow in importance; conflicts arose between commercial users and the government and military. At that time, there were no government regulations concerning which of the available frequencies could be used for what purpose or how much power ...