Ummm. My memory seems to be playing tricks with the date of my first mobile. I was sort of forced into getting one by a business need, and I can't see how that could have been before 1990. But for it to be as late as 1994 also seems unlikely. More digging needed, but real life is busy for most of today.

Thanks for that adrenalize . I've been looking at OPPO on and off for a while, for as and when my One
Plus 8 Pro needs to go for whatever reason. Particularly as OPPO owns OnePlus and seems to be the lead player on the Android skins now.

It's great to have a direct recommendation here, as external user reviews can be fairly random in their reliability. Even "Best of 202n" sites aren't fully objective.

I got great offer deal with smarty 5G for unlimited data, unlimited minutes and unlimited texts for just £16 a month through uswitch offer deal.

Some day I get 800Meg down and 110Meg up - not bad at all.

Dabbled with 1p myself as even in an area that isn't great for EE coverage I was getting 10/12 Meg down (Samsung A52 5G) but unless you use one of their new bundles (wasn't available when I tested) your credit will be gone in no time.

Gone back to giffgaff for now and am waiting for O2 5G to reach here as giffgaff offer 5G access with or without their bundles but I do use the 8 quid bundle myself.

Pay Monthly users get the new features first as companies would rather you signed up to something that gives them a guaranteed income from you for a period of time which is understandable from a business perspective.

PAYG was targeted at those who couldn't enter into a credit agreement such as being below 18 or not havig s good credit history.

Edited by techguy (Sun 17-Apr-22 15:09:59)

In reply to a post by techguy:

Pay Monthly users get the new features first as companies would rather you signed up to something that gives them a guaranteed income from you for a period of time which is understandable from a business perspective.

Even more so when you look at some of the costs of buying the antenna panels and radio kit for a mast site (3 sector) and the ground works and communications, I've concluded you don't get much change from £1m.

Network operators can invest in the future, with funding from the markets, but they need regular income to do so. PAYG even with packs, doesn't provide regular income. A great way to sell extra capacity that is already paid for, but doesn't help for investing in new technology & replacement mast sites. Which is why PAYG users were the last to get 4G, and now 5G. Three being the odd-one-out as they are trying to capture people from other networks.

Edited by jchamier (Sun 17-Apr-22 17:04:18)

In reply to a post by pluralist:

Ummm. My memory seems to be playing tricks with the date of my first mobile. I was sort of forced into getting one by a business need, and I can't see how that could have been before 1990. But for it to be as late as 1994 also seems unlikely. More digging needed, but real life is busy for most of today.

You were likely with Microtel later Hutchison Microtel. They created the Orange brand and migrated customers over to Orange from ‘94 onwards. So you were with Orange in the sense of their owners legacy network.

In reply to a post by gary333:

You were likely with Microtel later Hutchison Microtel. They created the Orange brand and migrated customers over to Orange from ‘94 onwards. So you were with Orange in the sense of their owners legacy network.

Microtel wasn't a network that transmitted anything, it was a consortium that pulled together the funding and marketing and branding etc, to hide the consumer brand before they wanted to go live. Very clever and it worked.

Oftel licence days tell you when things launched, original version on the Internet Archive.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130205065028/http://li...

Currently here:
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/spectrum/information/histor...

Hutchison's Orange launched on 28/Apr/1994 with 50% UK population coverage. Beating one2one that had launched in late 1993 with only London area coverage. Both on PCN (1800 MHz GSM) at significantly lower cost (£15, or £25/month) and buying from network owned stores.

I bought an Orange phone in Nov 94, and still have the same number with the original area code .

Edited by jchamier (Sun 17-Apr-22 17:30:58)

No, it's me that is probably wrong with the date. I want to sort it for my own peace of mind but I have many urgent things to do, with finding a new phone for the friend who lost his. A complete technophobe who was entirely unable to work a feature phone, with several people having tried to show him over a few years.

I ended up getting him a low end Samsung when it became necessary for his mother's carers to get in touch at any time. He was able to handle that after a few mess-ups with the Contacts lists and resultant SMS to the wrong person, but as a phone and with the onscreen qwerty keyboard he was OK.

I was paying for the PAYG, but as posted earlier passed my Huawei P10 Lite to him and got him to take out the same Three deal as mine. Hie mother had long since died but his usage had gone up along with his confidence. Plus he inherited a small amount plus the house so could afford it.

He could do with having the new one working by Friday lunch at the latest, but that could be tight.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by gary333:

You were likely with Microtel later Hutchison Microtel. They created the Orange brand and migrated customers over to Orange from ‘94 onwards. So you were with Orange in the sense of their owners legacy network.

Microtel wasn't a network that transmitted anything, it was a consortium that pulled together the funding and marketing and branding etc, to hide the consumer brand before they wanted to go live. Very clever and it worked.

Oftel licence days tell you when things launched, original version on the Internet Archive.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130205065028/http://li...

Currently here:
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/spectrum/information/histor...

Hutchison's Orange launched on 28/Apr/1994 with 50% UK population coverage. Beating one2one that had launched in late 1993 with only London area coverage. Both on PCN (1800 MHz GSM) at significantly lower cost (£15, or £25/month) and buying from network owned stores.

I bought an Orange phone in Nov 94, and still have the same number with the original area code .

Although this was after my time (so I wasn’t working there when this happened), I was led to believe (I.e. told when working for rival call connections limited an SP of cellnet), that Rabbit was the name of Hutchison Microtel cellular offering and that they closed down towards the end of 1993 / early 1994 and customers who wanted to continue with Hutchison were migrated to the new “modern” network called “Orange”.

Edit: That’s an impressive time for your number. When I started we still had customers with 0802 and 0850 mobile numbers, in fact TACS to GSM was still underway. My number was a Genie (SP 283 if there’s any old BTcellnet people around here) number so quite a bit later than yours .

Edited by gary333 (Sun 17-Apr-22 23:52:30)

In reply to a post by gary333:

Although this was after my time (so I wasn’t working there when this happened), I was led to believe (I.e. told when working for rival call connections limited an SP of cellnet), that Rabbit was the name of Hutchison Microtel cellular offering and that they closed down towards the end of 1993 / early 1994 and customers who wanted to continue with Hutchison were migrated to the new “modern” network called “Orange”.

Rabbit wasn't cellular. It was a "Call Point" system. You bought an expensive cordless digital phone for home use, and you could take the phone out with you. Yet you could only make calls when you were close to a Rabit sign, you couldn't receive. It didn't catch on. I saw it on Tomorrows World and at the time everyone thought it was a "portable phone box".

Edit: That’s an impressive time for your number.

I know a handful of people whom have numbers for the same duration. I remember the Genie brand from cellnet, wasn't that about the time of WAP ?