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Sunday, March 23, 2014

Vodafone celebrates the 30th anniversary of its (misspelled) name

This weekend marks 30 years since Racal Electronics revealed the name of its new mobile phone service as ‘Vodafone’.

The name was announced at a press conference in London on 22nd March 1984, although it wasn’t until 1991 that Vodafone demerged from Racal and became a separate company.

According to the original news release, “A subscriber to the Racal Vodafone service travelling by car between London and Edinburgh or Exeter, for instance, will be able to make or receive national and international telephone calls with ease throughout the entire journey - and on leaving the vehicle still use the portable Vodafone to remain constantly in touch anywhere and at any time day or night.”

Vodafone’s name was created by the company working with advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi. It’s inspired by the words ‘voice’, ‘data’ and ‘phone’, although the ad agency’s idea of using ‘fone’ was originally rejected by the company’s first CEO Sir Gerry Whent.

There are currently around 419 million customers connected to Vodafone or its partner networks.

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Tags: vodafone voice data racal

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Opinion Articles

And our survey said...

Mark Bridge writes:

The coolest person in the country admires the French president's wife and lives in East London. Oh, and they use a BlackBerry by day but an iPhone by night. That's what recent surveys say. Nonsense, isn’t it?

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The mobile phone tries to grow up

Mark Bridge writes:

The end of civilisation. The dawn of the future. Mobile phones are somewhere in the middle. Once seen as novelties for people with too much money, the mobile phone is now ubiquitous. And with that ubiquity comes an acceptance that they’re just tools. Doesn't it?

Which is why I was surprised to see a news article from Voice, a trade union that wants mobile phones banned from nurseries because of concern about inappropriate photographs.

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Sounding good to me

Mark Bridge writes:

"Sounding good to me". So sang Charlie Dore, back in the day when radio stations started to realise that quality was as important as quantity. "AM, FM, I feel so ecstatic", opined Cliff Richard, although I’m betting he’d have preferred the lack of hiss and crackle on FM stations.

Yet no-one’s really thought much about the quality of a phone call. Until now.

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The landline phone may be fading... but its number still remains

Mark Bridge writes:

In last weekend’s Sunday Times, Ali Hussain asked "Is this the end for the landline phone?"

He pointed out that the average mobile bill almost halved between 2003 and 2008, while landline bills fell by less than a fifth – which has meant the average mobile bill is now lower than the average landline bill. He went on to list fibre-optic broadband, mobile broadband, mobile calls, VoIP calls and satellite phones as alternatives to using fixed-line phones.

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Mixed verdict on mobile phones as cancer cause

Art Chimes of voanews.com writes:

Nearly two-thirds of the people on Earth now use mobile telephones, according to a study by the International Telecommunications Union. But how safe are those phones? Scientists still aren't sure, but some evidence is starting to suggest there may be danger along with the convenience.

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