Entertaining stuff from John George, founder and MD of Jag Communications, reflecting on the company’s 16th birthday last month. 

 

“It really doesn’t seem that long ago that I was setting things up in a disused railway carriage in my back garden – and now we have over 80 locations and a thriving business to business division.”

“I remember the first customer clearly, he was a local car trader and he paid about £600 for a used Motorola 8000s on Cellnet, there was only one tariff, £60 connection £25 a month and calls were 33p peak 10p off peak”. And ‘off peak’ was ‘after 11pm and before 6am’ – “they really meant off peak.

“There were a host of service providers; Europa, London Car Telephone, Millicom, Martin Dawes, Hutchinson. As I remember there were about 90 at that time, all now bought and consumed by the networks.”

“The amazing thing is that the industry has come so far yet has really changed so little: the packages are always late, the networks blow hot and cold for connections, there are still shortages of popular phones – and I bet there will still be stock shortages at Christmas.”