the nostalgy thread | all about the early days of mobile telephony

[petkow]

Originally Posted by inquisitor

Maybe we should open a nostalgy thread for this topic.

I'm with you! Good idea... so sorry if this is going OT.

I remember the first dual band phone that I used in late 1998. It was a dark purple Nokia 6110 and belonged to my big sister who was working in Germany at the time. Even though it was for her I was the one who read up on it and told her what to get! She was well impressed with how small it was. (though it can be considered a brick these days!)

At the time it was quite an expensive handset and really the fact it was dual band was marketed as such a big deal! It was with Viag Intercom who were a small GSM 1800 network in Germany but had some funny deal with Swiss telecom (I think), so that their customers could "roam" on the larger D1 network in Germany who were on GSM 900. (Hence the real need for dual band phones even for customers who didn't roam internationally). I think calls made on the D1 nework incurred a 10 Pfennig surcharge or something. Perhaps someone else remembers the details better?