The poles with all the spreaders were for wired telephony. Where I am, that was still being used through into the early 1990's then the leap to GSM cellular. What is also not reported about the 1st pic is that the base station featured there would only be about 2Watts output power with an intended footprint of about 150m or there abouts. The 4G & lower technology towers have anoutput power of about 50W per antenna. The anennas are much bigger because the expected range is measured in kilometres and large aperture antennas are required to "hear" the weak signals from the Mobile Stations (handsets which are 2Watts with putrid antennas). Hope this helps.
Interesting to note that (pic related) is a Clearnet ID!