January 1 In History: Britain's First Cell Phone Call

Michael Harrison, the man who made the first cell phone call (Source: vodafone.co.uk)

JAKARTA - On New Year's Eve, the son of Vodafone leader Sir Ernest Harrison, Michael Harrison, sneaks out of a family party quietly. Hours later, at exactly midnight January 1, 1985, he was standing in the shadow of Big Ben on Parliament Square. Michael called home to wish his father Happy New Year. It became a historic moment because cell phone calls were first made in England.

Quoting The Guardian, Friday January 1, in the call, Michael Harrison said: “Hi Daddy. This is Mike. This is the first call made on a UK commercial cellular network. " On the other end of the line, a champagne stopper appears and a photographer captures the moment.

Although it was actually Michael Harrison who first made cell calls in England, people are more familiar with the historic moment, which was first performed by a comedian named Ernest Wise. He made a call at London's St Katharine Docks on 1 January 1985, via the Vodafone network.

The crowd gathered near the Dickens Inn to watch Wise call the Vodafone office in Newbury on the 5 kg Transportable Vodafone VT1. Later that day, Wise made the first official mobile call to Vodafone's headquarters which was then over an Indian restaurant in Newbury, Berkshire.

Vodafone, a startup based in defense and electronics company Racal. Vodafone beat BT Cellnet to launch the UK's first mobile network in just nine days.

In 1985, more than 12,000 cell phones were sold for around £ 2,000 each. The phone was marketed in a Saatchi & Saatchi ad featuring a businessman driving a Ferrari.

Today, Vodafone has 438 million subscribers worldwide. The UK mobile phone industry generated more than £ 15.6 billion in 2013, with more than 83 million people registering. This fantastic number far exceeds the UK's population of only 64 million people.

Vodafone VT1

The Vodafone VT1 is a portable phone which weighs almost 5 kg. The phone needs to be charged for 10 hours to give a call time of 30 minutes.

"However, we didn't know that it would change everyone's life," said Vodafone's First Sales Director Steve Phillips during an interview in 2014.

Phillips was the head of a team of 12 sales team members tasked with selling 1,000 connections and calls between September and January 1985.

“We don't have a telephone or network. We just took pictures, ”he recalls. "We sell to board members, CEOs, MDs, and high net worth individuals, who are early adopters and are considered successful," he concluded.