Ma Bell's orphan: US cellular telephony, 1947-1996

John Leslie King and Joel West

Telecommunications Policy, vol. 26, issue 3-4, 189-203

Abstract: The AT&T Bell System invented cellular telephony and deployed the world's first prototype cellular system. Strangely, neither AT&T nor its spin-off Regional Bell Operating Companies capitalized on that technological lead, and cellular telephony in the US slipped behind that in other developed countries. This turnaround is explained as a combination of a competency trap that blinded the AT&T Bell System leadership to the importance of the wireless telephony market and the lead their cellular system offered, coupled with a failure of institutional agency required to organize and direct the emerging industry resulting from the death of the AT&T Bell System.

Keywords: Cellular; telephony; Competency; trap; Institutional; agency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308596102000083
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:telpol:v:26:y::i:3-4:p:189-203

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/30471/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... /30471/bibliographic

Access Statistics for this article

Telecommunications Policy is currently edited by Erik Bohlin

More articles in Telecommunications Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().