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Been on Verizon since somtime around 2002. Texting was an add on cost back then. I remember when my wife started texting it cost 25 cents per text plus added cost if you sent a picture. As my wife started using it more I got a plan that included hundreds of texts per month, maybe 300? for 5 or 10 dollars additional charge.
Been texting in my country back in 2000. I actually was addicted to it. It was a pain in the ass to text coz I use a nokia phone with a flip phone alphanumeric keypad. LOL. But holy smokes it is addicting.
heck remember you paid by the mins.. suncom paid like 70 a month for 3k mins and 2k text. Then came unlimited text when the BB came out. Few years later in 2001? unlimited talk and text was main stream, then you paid 512mb block for 10$ a block.
Was texting even going on in 2000 or 2001 (date on the film)?
JUL 5, 1991 First 2G network for commercial use.
The Finnish telecommunications company, Radiolinja, launched the very first second generation (2G) network for public use. The increased bandwidth allowed for the world's first SMS text message and data transmission. Also, 2G allowed for ringtones.
JAN 2, 1993 PDA cell phones. The Simon Personal Communicator, jointly marketed by IBM and BellSouth, was the first mobile phone to add PDA features. This 20-ounce phone contained a pager, cell phone, calculator, address book, fax machine, and e-mail all wrapped into one. Unfortunately, this multi-purpose phone cost about $900.
Clueless was released on July 19, 1995 so they would have been using what are retroactively called 1G analog phones.
American Personal Communications (APC), the first GSM carrier in America, provided the first text-messaging service in the United States. Sprint Telecommunications Venture, a partnership of Sprint Corp. and three large cable-TV companies, owned 49 percent of APC. APC operated under the brand name of Sprint Spectrum and launched its service on November 15, 1995 in Washington, D.C. and in Baltimore, Maryland. Vice President Al Gore in Washington, D.C. made the initial phone-call to launch the network, calling Mayor Kurt Schmoke in Baltimore. Initial growth of text messaging was slow, with customers in 1995 sending on average only 0.4 message per GSM customer per month.
So early adapters would easily have been texting by the year 2000.
Introduced in 1992, area code 917 is the first overlay area code in North America. It was the first cellular/pager/voicemail area code for the city.It was is a telephone area code for all five boroughs of New York City (Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx).
By the end of 2000 there were 193 million landlines in the USA and 109 million mobile cellular lines. With a mass of over 100 million cell phones, there must have been a fair amount of texting going on.
A ball park number is that 20-22 million mobile numbers were being added every year. So prior to November 1995 there were only analog mobile phones, most were built into cars. Obviously Manhattan had the highest concentration. By 2004 mobile numbers surpassed landlines.
I always wonder why texting is still popular today. I've been texting since the early 2000s when majority of people are using a startac phone. Texting was consider too geeky or dorky back then. Especially when instant 2 way voice was the big thing with Nextel.
I got my first cell phone in 2003 the carrier was Cellular one which was later bought out by Alltel. It was text message capable and they had plans which were 250 texts for $5, 1000 texts for $10 or unlimited for $15
Txting is incredibly tedious without a real keyboard. I use a cheapo $20 phone when I travel in Africa. I hate it when someone sends me a txt. I think you have to be a kid to actually enjoy doing it.
Not sure if it was worse or not - but with the old key types, you started to memorize the key combinations so you could send quick texts without even looking at the phone. e.g. 5552833 = running late.
That said - I know I didn't have a text capable phone. But we had a text pager. Basically a device that can accept pages and texts. This was the time of batman belts in IT. Where most folks had a text/pager, a phone (Nextel - with the chirp), another phone (personal), and a PDA.
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