Why radio receivers won’t tune 800-900 MHz
I had (and probably still have) a Radio Shack Pro-2006 scanner from the late 80's. Even pre-Internet, instructions on how to bypass the cellular band block were easily found on Fidonet and local BBSes, and all it involved was removing a single diode.<p><a href="https://www.wentztech.com/radio/Equipment/Pro2006/pro2006mods.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.wentztech.com/radio/Equipment/Pro2006/pro2006mod...</a><p>It was really a golden time for snoop...er..listening to cellular phones because they were so enormously expensive, including per-minute usage fees, that only drug dealers, doctors, and the 1%-ers could actually afford to use them.  So there was always interesting things to hear.<p>Ordinary cordless phones were much more affordable and fairly common at this time.  They broadcast in the clear at 49 MHz (at least in the USA) and had no legal protections like the 800 MHz cellular phones.