phone subscribers numbered just over 340,000, and
that figure doubled the following year. By 1989,
there were more than 3.5 million cell phone users in
the United States. As a result, in 1989, the FCC ex-
panded the number of frequencies available for use
by cellular networks, granting licenses to cellular
telephone companies to operate in the portion of
the FM range previously designated for ultrahigh
frequency (UHF) television channels 70 through 83.
The FCC’s action fueled the already dramatic expan-
sion of cellular networks, increasing the number of
cell phone subscribers in the United States to nearly
5.3 million in 1990. Despite the rapid expansion of
cellular networks, however, service was still unavail-
able in many areas of the United States at decade’s
end, and where it was available, it remained prohibi-
tively expensive for most Americans.
The social and economic ramifications of cell
phone usage became evident as the number of users
continued to grow. Conversations previously con-
ducted from homes and offices were increasingly
conducted in automobiles and public places, raising
issues of privacy, etiquette, and highway safety. The
availability of wireless communication meant that
business could be conducted at a faster pace and at
irregular times, contributing to both workplace pro-
ductivity and increased stress levels among profes-
sionals. The ability of service providers to manage
rapidly increasing cell phone traffic had emerged as
a critical issue by the end of the decade. Security also
became an increasing source of concern, as the ana-
log signals of first-generation cell phones were trans-
mitted unscrambled and were easily monitored with
scanners.
Impact Security and bandwidth concerns, along
with advances in digital information technology,
would lead to the creation of second-generation digi-
tal cell phone service in the 1990’s, and the phones
themselves would diminish in size and increase in
functionality. The development of cell phone net-
works and the introduction of the first handheld
mobile telephone in the 1980’s were critical to the
dramatic advances in wireless communications tech-
nology of the late twentieth and early twenty-first cen-
turies. Along with the development of the Internet,
then, early cell phones made the 1980’s the founda-
tional decade for communications technologies de-
signed to ensure that individuals were always reach-
able and always connected to the broader world.
Further Reading
Agar, Jon.Constant Touch: A Global Histor y of the Mobile
Phone. New York: Totem Books, 2005. Compre-
hensive global history of the cellular telephone.
Includes detailed discussion of the evolution of
cellular technology during the 1980’s.
Galambos, Louis, and Eric John Abrahamson.Any-
time, Anywhere: Entrepreneurship and the Creation of a
Wireless World. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2002. Narrative history of the cellular tele-
phone industry from a business perspective.
Steinbock, Dan.The Mobile Revolution: The Making
of Mobile Services Worldwide. Sterling, Va: Kogan
Page, 2005. Provides a global perspective on the
development of cellular telephone networks in
the 1980’s; discusses the role of Motorola and the
DynaTAC in the evolution of wireless communi-
cation during the decade.
Michael H. BurchettSee also AT&T breakup; Information age; Science
and technology; Yuppies.Central Park jogger case
The Event Trial of five African American teens
for the violent rape and beating of a female
jogger
Date Attack took place on April 19, 1989
Place New York, New York
The discover y of a brutally beaten and raped woman in
New York City’s Central Park led to the arrest of five young
African Americans, who were accused of spending the night
“wilding,” leaving a trail of victims. Subsequent media
coverage exploited the great racial fears and problems preva-
lent in America at the time.
At 1:30a.m., April 19, 1989, two men discovered a se-
verely beaten woman, wearing a bra with her hands
tied together by a shirt, in Manhattan’s Central Park.
Police revealed that she had been severely beaten,
suffering an almost 75 percent blood loss, multiple
blows to her head and body, and extreme exposure.
Before awakening with persistent amnesia, the
twenty-eight-year-old investment banker, whose
identity was not released to the public, remained in a
coma for twelve days at Metropolitan Hospital. Dur-
ing the same April night, two male joggers reported
being attacked by groups of African American and190 Central Park jogger case The Eighties in America