Mighty networks from little decisions grow [COMMS Cellular 25]

The UK wasn't the first country to have a cellular network. The Japanese launched their first network on 1 December 1979, and by 1983 the US had functioning AMPS networks in some cities. In Scandinavia, the NMT system was already offering roaming. But Margaret Thatcher's UK government, with its emphasis on enabling competition and encouraging entrepreneurship, created a febrile atmosphere in which people believed they could forge radical business and social change. Many of them went on to do just that, though few can have imagined that the decisions they made were going to reshape existing industries, create entirely new ones and alter how people communicated forever. In this necessarily partial history of the UK cellular industry, here's a few tales of moments when things changed for good.