So continuing on my theme of creating unique tags to give myself the smug satisfaction of being at the top of the new tag's 'trending' list, I'm going to start #ForgottentechThursday in which I look at technology from the 80s and 90s which didn't really set the world alight.
Tonights subject is Rabbit. Who?
Back in the lates 80's, someone thought it might be a good idea to try and combine a home phone with a limited use mobile. Mobile phone usage was on the rise as prices began to fall and the use of pagers (remember those?) was declining rapidly. Hence location-specific (Telepoint) telephone services were created to cater for the personal user to get the benefits of having both home phone and mobile in one handset. Amongst the 4 licenses granted in the UK in 1989 was BYPS, later bought out by Hutchinson Telecom and operating under the Rabbit brand name.
OK, so what you had was a phone which was normally plugged in at home on your 'landline' and which you used to make and recieve calls. When you left the house, you took the phone with you and it allowed you to make outgoing calls if you were within 150 yards max. of a Rabbit Transmitter. Not incoming, just outgoing, but you did get some paging and messaging capability with it. You just had to look for the Rabbit logo on a sign over a shop doorway.
The network ran on CT2 standard, which was the norm for cordless phones. This would later develop into DECT, and we've all heard of that! The 150yard range comes from the fact that the transmitter only output 10mW. If you imagine your home cordless phone sat in its base station, this is exactly the principle upon which Rabbit ran its system. You had the phone, and the base station was in a shop.
The other three license holders, Zonephone, Callpoint and Phonepoint, all started up in 1989 but had all closed down due to poor subscriber numbers by 1991. Surprisingly unperturbed, and the laughter of business analysts throughout the land ringing in their ears, the Rabbit network was finally launched in May 1992 with the aim of having full national coverage and 12000 base stations by Christmas. Christmas arrived and the 12000 base station goal was achieved, but sadly not matched by subscriber numbers. At the height of its popularity, there were only 20,000 subscribers, and by the time they finally realised what a dumb plan it had been and shut it down in December 93, just 20 months on from launch, there were just 2000 subscribers. It had been an abject failure.
Despite losing a reported £183 million on Rabbit, it wasn't all bad news as Hutchinson Telecom had also set up a Telepoint network in both Singapore and Hong Kong which grew to over 70,000 subscribers each and were very profitable. Hutchinson also went on to form a proper grown-up mobile phone company, Orange, and after that, 3. The handsets were continued to be used at home well into the late 90's.
The technology behind the network was cutting edge, but the timing of the application of said technology was terrible. Upon closing, Vodaphone had already got 900,000 mobile phone subscribers on it's full mobile network.
Why did I start with Rabbit?
Well, I just think it's a little sad when so much work has been put into them and they fail. Luckily for me, as a bright young network designer at BT at the time, I'd been offered a job on their design team in 1991 but had turned it down simply because I didn't want to go and live 'down south'. I wasn't a very adventurous guy back in the day lol...
So that's Rabbit. Gone, and mainly forgotten but now taking its place on the eternal blockchain!!
