The start of 2015 marks the 30th anniversary of the first mobile phone call ever made in the UK, changing the way people and businesses communicate.
Two companies, the monopolistic BT (which operated the Cellnet joint-venture with Securicor) and the newcomer Vodafone, had been awarded spectrum licences to offer mobile services, but it was the younger firm that was able to make the first call on 1 January 1985.
Michael Harrison, son of Vodafone chairman Sir Ernest Harrison, left the family’s New Year’s Eve party in Surrey and drove to London to make the call using a Vodafone Transportable VT1 phone from Parliament Square.
“Hi Dad, it’s Mike. Happy New Year. This is the first ever call on a UK mobile network,” were the first words uttered on the Vodafone network, with comedian Ernie Wise making another call later that day from St Katherine’s Dock in the capital to the operator’s headquarters in Newbury.
“The mobile phone had emerged in America, the Scandinavian Nordic Mobile Telephone System had launched earlier, so that phone call was not a global first, but it was important for the UK because it put the UK telecoms industry firmly in the mobile sector,” said Nigel Linge, professor of telecommunications at the University of Salford. “
BT, which part-owned Cellnet, followed suit a few days later, but Vodafone was pleased with being first to the punch given the difference in size between the two companies. Vodafone was formed by Racal, a company that specialised in military radio technology, and had very little experience in telecommunications.
“It just felt like BT was Goliath and we were a very small David,” Mike Pinches, Vodafone’s first technical director told TechWeekEurope. He was one of Vodafone’s first five employees and was responsible for designing and planning the network infrastructure.
“You have to remember the political climate at the time. British Telecom (BT) was a monopoly and Margaret Thatcher’s government had decided it was time to try and break up the monopolies and introduce competition.
“Mobile telephony was one of the platforms for doing that, so the government decided to grant a licence almost automatically to BT and in 1982 they launched a competition for a second cellular licence. The Racal bid, which eventually became Vodafone, was selected.”
“On day one we sat down with what became Cellnet to agree what technology we were going to use, because we couldn’t buy any equipment until then,” he explained. “Having created this competition, the first thing we were told to do was to sit down together!”
Vodafone also had to negotiate with BT to ensure the mobile network was compatible with landlines. Pinches said people at BT were divided between those who wanted to “strangle BT at birth” and those who thought competition would improve the state monopoly.
“We had a very interesting debate but we created a system that worked out quite well in the end,” he said.
“The next job was selecting some equipment both infrastructure base stations and switches and mobile phones. We selected a large group of potential suppliers around the world who we knew were in some way involved with the beginnings of mobile phones.”
When the network launched in 1985, there were just five base stations, all in London, located at the Royal Lancaster Hotel, Crystal Palace, the Royal Exchange, the Thames Barrier and Highgate. Vodafone reached 100 sites by September 1985, but just like in 2015, there was plenty of red tape to overcome.
“I was thrown in at the deep end, negotiating with landlords and property owners,” said John Dellow, Vodafone’s first operations director and the man tasked with secure sites for network infrastructure. “There was quite a resistance in the early days. We wanted a standard mast which was 30 metres with three big antennas on the top. There was a lot of reluctance by local authorities to give us planning permission.”
But London was always the early focus and Vodafone had great success in targeting corporate and business users. The company’s sales team was given a target of 1,000 orders before launch but secured 2,000 thanks to the belief it would improve productivity.
Before mobile phones, business would use typewriters, fax machines, landlines and letters for internal and external communication.
“We sold an awful lot to managing directors, CEOs, board members and rich people,” said Steven Phillips, Vodafone’s first sales director. “Very early, we grasped the opportunity of selling to corporate users. We realised businesses were searching for something to make their organisations more efficient and there was a lot of frustration with the current setup.”
“Before mobile, time away from the office on site visits and viewing properties meant you were completely out of touch,” he said. “We spent a lot travelling to nearby phone boxes to update colleagues, losing valuable onsite time, and often missed important customer calls from not being in the office.
“Having a mobile meant being able to make a call anytime, anywhere. It made a massive difference. It gave me at least an additional full working day a week of productive time, and extra time meant getting ahead of competition. In 1985, it was rare to see people with phones because it was so expensive, but I had to have one. It transformed my business.”
Of course mobile phones have come down in price from thousands of pounds to tens of pounds, making mobile technology accessible to everyone. Indeed, Vodafone’s research suggests that 67 percent of firms say mobile communications are essential to their operations.
The company is currently in the middle of a £19 billion investment programme in a bid to arrest falling revenues. In the UK, it is focusing on 4G, unified communications and fixed line services having acquired Cable and Wireless for £1 billion in 2012.
The UK communications market is competitive as ever with BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk eying up Vodafone’s mobile customers. But at least the Newbury-based firm can always claim to be the first.
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Bit of a one-sided report. The first public calls were made in the summer of 1984 when Cellnet provided - at the government's request - a mobile system for the summit in London involving President Reagan and PM Thatcher. Also, Cellnet had more than 25 sites in London and Birmingham in the first week of January 1985. It didn't have Ernie Wise - big mistake.