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It’s great to know your roots and as a wise man once said, if you don’t know where you came from, how will you know where you’re going? And if you thought guys like Andy Rubin or Steve Jobs were pioneers of their time — check out these guys from AT&T’s early days who had no idea what they were onto. But who could blame ‘em. There’s no way they could have predicted that cellphones would soon shape an entire generation thanks to SMS, picture messaging, applications –  heck, even the internet — and that all of that would be so easily accessible (and mandatory) from these tiny little computers that fit inside our skinny jeans.

In the video from 1979, you’ll see what was essentially closed beta Bell was using to test their new cellular network where hundreds of their customers could use a carphone at the same time. And this was a huge deal given in New York, only 12 people could be making a call. Just about every 70′s fashion cliche makes the cut — everything from ginormous eye wear, to sleazy mustaches and cheesy open collard suits. I can only wonder what our kids will say about us. You know, while riding their touchscreen hoverboards to school…

[Via ReadWriteWeb]

When it comes to carriers, wireless data has been turning into quite the commodity over the past few months. This is made no better evident than the amount of ways carriers are amending their policies, tightening up data use wherever they can.

T-Mobile — who pretty much introduced US consumers to “throttled unlimited data” — is once again restricting their customer’s data use, this time with new limits to roaming data usage. Come April 5th, customers will be allotted a smaller amount of data use while roaming that’s directly proportioned to their current plan. You can see via the leaked picture above, it ranges from 10 MB of on their lower 200MB plan, all the way up to 200MB of roaming data on a plan with 10GB or more.

The bright side? You wont be charged any overages, T-Mobile will simply cut off your roaming data once you hit your limit. By contrast, Sprint offers 300MB of roaming data with their truly unlimited plan before a customer rep will come to your door and give you the boot. While this news probably wont make the majority of consumers gasp, “How could they!?” I’m sure it will affect some of your decisions when shopping around for a carrier. No?

[TMoNews]