Is there any way a time traveler could get reception with a cell phone ca. 1980?

[Bad_Astronaut]

Even if there was no existing cellular network you could bring back a computer along with some custom hardware and antennas, allowing you to set up your own small cell phone network that plugs directly into a regular phone jack.

I’m not sure if anything like this exists commercially or industrially, but it wouldn’t be too hard for a knowledgeable engineer with a decent budget to cobble something together.

@Sampiro

Is there anything you could have transported back to you, other than a tower or your own satellite, that would enable you to use your cell phone to call landline phones? Any kind of portable transmitter or whatever that would allow your cell phone to be anything other than a paper weight?

Just to fight a little ignorance, cellular phones do not communicate with satellites in any way.

[Mr.Moto]

@Bad_Astronaut

I’m not sure if anything like this exists commercially or industrially, but it wouldn’t be too hard for a knowledgeable engineer with a decent budget to cobble something together.

I’m budgeting this.

Should work well across the country in 1980.

[The_Tao_s_Revenge]

@Alex_Dubinsky

Be sure to bring a hands-free headset to disguise your incredible looking phone. And a shopping cart with filled garbage bags to disguise your headset.

Modern phones have came a long way in the quest to look like old phones.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/7830/

@Bad_Astronaut

Just to fight a little ignorance, cellular phones do not communicate with satellites in any way.

He prolly included sat phones which some people include in the term cellphones, just like how cable “modems” don’t actually modulate or demodulate.

[Jerseyman]

I’m not sure whether you would need a computer. It would need a very sensitive transceiver and a modem, probably of a kind that would have to be made to order. The transceiver would probably be of a sensitivity and on frequencies only in use for space communication and it would not have much of a range.