The Rabbit! Well, to
be more specific, CT2. "What the hell's CT2?",
I hear you ask! It was the digital replacement for CT1,
which, in plain English, is the cordless phone system
which millions of us use daily in our homes (in the UK).
So, what happened to CT2? Developed in the '80s, it was a
fully digital system utilising 40 channels which solved
all the painful problems of traditional analogue cordless
phones - no interference, no noise, no eavesdropping, and
with 40 channels available, no problems getting a line.
The other benefit stated, was that your home cordless
could be used in the office, round your friend's, and on
the street near a commercial CT2 point. Sounds too good
to be true!The UK government licensed four companies to set up and run national CT2 networks: Phonepoint, Mercury Callpoint, Zonephone, and (Hutchison) Rabbit. Phonepoint started a service within the London area in August '89 and closed it just over two years later. Zonephone and Callpoint likewise had short lived services, and the last, Rabbit, survived until 93/94.
Rabbit even allowed you to (sort of) receive calls anywhere - pagers were issued under the "Rabbit Recall" scheme using the Hutchison nationwide paging network. These informed you of who wanted you to call them, whereupon you called them with your Rabbit phone when you were next near (within 100m of) a Rabbit Point (found in certain high streets, shopping malls, and even briefly in selected London Underground stations). Is it any wonder people bought proper mobile phones instead?!
Hutchison have gone on to greater things (the Orange mobile network) and all that's left of CT2 is a handful of users, like myself, who have "private" base stations at home and a few Rabbit handsets dotted round the house. It's a great system, and much cheaper than the CT2 replacement, DECT, which is finally trickling onto the market at inflated prices. And, it was the forerunner to the GSM digital system, hence its inclusion here as "early tech".
Incidentally, you can impress your friends (yawn!) by telling them that GSM doesn't stand for "Global System for Mobile communications"; it stands for Groupe Speciale Mobile (hope I spelt that right!), the 1980s European "think tank" which developed the system. Just like DVD stands for Digital Video Disc. So there!
