Worth noting we could have also had other technologies such as the answering machine, and television.[1] Tim Wu wrote an awesome book called "The Master Switch" about entrenched companies using their power to block emerging technologies. Radio fought to keep television out of the market, and the telegraph operators fought tooth and nail to keep the phone from gaining acceptance.
The title is a bit misleading. The army and Bell Labs could have built a cellular phone in the 1940s, but they had no way to keep it connected to the telephone network as it moved between cells. That required computerized telephone switches, which weren't developed until at least the 1960s; that triggered another big regulatory mess.
The details are in The Idea Factory, which every scientist and engineer should read. The main reason that AT&T didn't get the spectrum is that they didn't really want it: video phones were going to be the future.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 18.9 ms ] thread1. http://io9.gizmodo.com/5691604/how-ma-bell-shelved-the-futur...
The details are in The Idea Factory, which every scientist and engineer should read. The main reason that AT&T didn't get the spectrum is that they didn't really want it: video phones were going to be the future.