When Did Cellphone Service First Come To Maine?

Earlier in April, we hit a major tech milestone: the 50th anniversary of the very first cellphone call.

These days, our phones are as important to us as our car keys and our wallets.  For some people, their phone is even more important than those other items!

The first call was made by a Motorola executive named Marty Cooper, according to a YouTube video from Today. The call, which was made in Manhattan, was a big trolling of his Bell Labs counterpart.

You see, while Motorola had been focused on creating a phone that was fully mobile (handheld), the team at Bell Labs was convinced that people were only going to want to use a phone in their car.

This video explains the story:

But, what about Maine?  When were Mainers first able to pull a "brick" phone out of their briefcase to call Delores back at the office to find out if they missed any important calls?'

We really had to do some digging find an answer to this one.

According to telephones.newenglandhistorywalks.com, the first celluar service begins in large cities in 1984, and it wasn't until a few years later that Cellular One and  Maine Cellular began offering service in Greater Portland.

It was not cheap, either!  Northrup Grumman reported that the cost of the phone was in the thousands.

Within a few years, other companies began operating in Maine, according to telephones.newenglandhistorywalks.com, and a few years after that, the networks began expanding to the less populated parts of the state.

We've come so far since then - not just in the cost of the phones - but what they can do, too.