@john65pennington Could you cite the decision by the FCC, and maybe provide a link? I would like more information about this.
Anyway, most cell phones work very differently from CB radio. CB radios are relatively high-powered and occupy a channel when operating (a “channel” being a range of frequencies of a certain width). They operate in half-duplex mode (they can both transmit and receive, but not simultaneously) and are promiscuous (every radio on a channel “hears” and “talks to” every other radio on the channel). CB radios can operate independently of base stations or repeaters, and each one broadcasts an analog signal.
Analog signals are tremendously wasteful of bandwidth. For this reason and others, you can operate many many cellphones on the same “channel” as a few CB radios.
Once you get 20 or so CB’ers talking on a channel, one of two conditions happens:
1) No one can understand anything because everyone is talking at once; or
2) Nice folks wait a long time for their turn to talk.
Neither of these is particularly good.
Most cell phones these days are digital and use “frequency hopping spread spectrum” techniques, which means that the phone can “hop around” between frequencies in a “channel” in order to avoid interference. Also, as mentioned, digital signals are more economical to transmit than analog ones. Digital receivers on a “channel” can tell which signals are intended for them and ignore all others. Also phones can appear to transmit and receive at the same time even if they really are not. (I don’t know whether they do or don’t, but since most phones have only one antenna don’t think they can.)
So, if as many people were using CB radios now as currently use cell phones, they would use up a tremendous amount of bandwidth; there might not be enough clear air for any other radios at all, and everything you said on your CB would be heard by hundreds (at least) of other people.
Come to think of it, that last might not be so bad…