Nokia 5110
Out of context: Reply #15
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- Horp0
When I was at college, Mercury Communications were muscling in on BT's deregulated business. They had created a national network of bizarrely designed payphone kiosks, and then they introduced Mercury Communications 121 mobile phone. It was a giant blue plastic flip phone. It cost the earth but they had a special offer... anyone buying one within the first few months (I forget the actual time period) would have free calls for life as long as they stuck to a set of rules concerning use of the phone.
Kids in my year at college were spunking their entire year's grant to buy these phones, even though they had nobody to talk to on them, and they had to do various things like make a certain amount of inner London based called and a certain amount of national calls to keep the contract going. If they didn't stick absolutely to the letter of the rules the contract was terminated. One bloke in my year, Dom Leung if anyone knows him (he's a film editor) kept his big blue Mercury phone going for ages... way past the point after which mobile phones had properly arrived and Mercury Communications had ceased to exist.
I sometime wonder if anyone managed to keep one of those going even now, and some company somewhere has inherited the contract and has to keep giving them free calls.
The whole thingw as a scam though. It was really clear even back then that things were going to change and there was no way you'd get free calls for life.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazi…
