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Old 05-12-2003, 09:31
Ocean Pacific
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Does anyone remember Rabbit? I am having an argument with a friend over it. He says I am making it up. I can't remember the exact details, but before mobiles were popular there was something called Rabbit. I think it was late 80's/early nineties. Newsagents,stations and such places had these Rabbit signs and you had to stand next to them to use the phone. I can't remember but I think you could only make calls with it and not receive them. Am I right?
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Old 05-12-2003, 09:39
banbury_oddball
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Indeed you are correct. I do remember the shops with Rabbit stickers in the window to say you can use your phone here. I reckon that it had a little transmitter / aerial type thingy inside the shop. If I am correct, I think this was the start of Hutchinson in the UK that became Orange, but I could be wrong. Working for Vodafone you would think I should know this kind of historical trivia.

Anyone else care to shed any light on this ???
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Old 05-12-2003, 10:13
MarcPaulB
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Rabbit was a location-specific phone service for the UK, launched in 1992. The service was backed financially by Hutchison Whampoa, but came to an end in December 1993 - roaming mobile phone services were launched at the same time, and proved more popular.
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Old 05-12-2003, 10:36
jaymz
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The Rabbit phone was sort of a cordless/mobile hybrid.

You had a base-station at home, and when it was in range you were registered with that, and it operated just like any other DECT phone.

When you were out and about, if you were near a public rabbit point you could make calls (but not receive them) more cheaply than a phonebox - providing no-one else was using that particular access point.

I used one for a while as my home phone (this was in the early days of digital cordless phones), but the public network had collapsed before I ever used it.
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Old 05-12-2003, 13:31
Kicka38
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Rabbit was a disaster, Orange followed a great success, then sold to FT.

Now Hutch have 3, and need deep pockets...
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Old 06-12-2003, 04:53
Andi
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Originally posted by banbury_oddball
Working for Vodafone you would think I should know this kind of historical trivia.
I thought you would remember the time that Vodafone owned Orange at one point by accident as soon as they realised this they flogged to a French company I think?? If I remember at the time a Mobile Network could not own another.............. something like that anyway.....

Rabbit was fantatsic, they tried to compete with Mercury(One2One/T-Mobile) at the time, however Mercury concentrated on built up areas mainly within the M25 to start with then expanding to major cities obviously gaining more support from the business user. Hutchinson suddenly realised they couldn't market Rabbit effectiveley as Mercury due to the coverage they had, so decided to go the same kind of route building masses of Orange base stations all over the country. Well all I can say is the guy in the Hutchinson meeting who said 'lets build a network and call it Orange' must be a very rich man!!
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Old 06-12-2003, 04:58
Andi
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Do you remember 'this'
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