My first proper job after leaving college was with a small and not very well known radio telecommunications company called RACAL.  As a fresh-faced wet behind the ears engineer but a wannabe Gordon Geckko (Wall Street 1987) I began my career as a mobile telecommunications Account Executive. 

As part of the package, along with a shiny brief-case that opened up – James Bond style – into a rather snazzy presenter that aided the complex explanation of a seven cell repeat pattern followed by the “FAB’s” of mobile communications (that’s features advantages and benefits, for those of you that didn’t attend the rather corny 1980’s school of selling delivered by an ex-double glazing salesman sporting a pale grey suite and pink socks) were the keys to a Ford Sierra complete with a hanger in the back for my new Moss Bros suit jacket and, screwed rather unceremoniously to the dashboard was my mobile phone! I’d arrived!

But it got better, much better!  When I wasn’t in the car driving in the ‘fast lane’ of the M4 to Newbury (actually it was the middle lane, so that people passing me in the outside lane could see that I was on the phone) I could ‘do lunch’ and in the evenings I would frequent a highly popular wine-bar in Guildford where I could rub shoulders with other shoulder padded jacket wearing, slick backed haired “dealers”. Only I went one better.  I would park the Sierra somewhere obvious, remove the handset of my car phone from its utilitarian (Russian tank utilitarian) dash board clamp and go to the boot where I would unscrew, unclip, disconnect, slide, pull and twist a metal box from another utilitarian clamp, connect this to the handset that I had removed earlier and then attach a leatherette carry strap – I was now in “Transportable mode”!  It is now inconceivable to imagine that when this piece of hi-tech, high fashion equipment was on the bar next to me I was “It”!

The reason however, for having this amazing piece of equipment, was not as I believed to look cool, but was in fact to go out and convince other people that having a mobile phone was a good idea; it might save time, money or make them more efficient. (These are FAB’s!)  In fact we had to make up loads of FAB’s in order to try and get people to part with money for what at this time was a gimmick!  I can remember sitting in people’s offices, wearing my shiny suite, using, with great style and panache my shiny briefcase, flip chart extoling the virtues of owning a mobile phone; and the biggest objection I would get… “Why do I want a mobile phone when I’ve got a phone on my desk?” 

Back in the day, I knew mobile would be big, I knew that in time it would catch on and when Racal, the small telecoms company that I worked for eventually spun out a mobile company called Vodafone and  celebrated it’s twenty thousandth connection,  we all knew that mobile was the place to carve out a career. What we had no way of predicting was the sheer  scale to which mobile would change the planet, and how it would alter our lives to an extent that now, mobile is so much an ingrained part of human existence, it is inconceivable to imagine life without it. 

The other day, while sitting in the office with a new client, by the way I have dropped the shiny suit and shoulder pads! I was reminded of my early days selling mobile phones, when a remark was made about PC’s “why will people want a PC on their desk” my client hypothesised “when they can do everything on a mobile” and that got me thinking; during those very early days of mobile, none of us were able to predict the extent that it would change our lives  nor were any of us  able to truly imagine the size, success  and impact that the internet would have, what then happens when you converge these two, I would like to say technologies but these are more than simply technologies now, they are two of the bedrocks of human life. 

Can we use the history of the growth of mobile and the Internet as a measure what will be, or will something far bigger, far more monumental happen?

Whatever happens, I think it’s pretty safe to say that mobile web is going to be huge, which just for the record, I have been saying for about three years and just like my early days in mobile when people genuinely looked at me and said that mobile would never catch on, until very recently most people I spoke to about mobile web said exactly the same thing, thankfully this sentiment has changed in recent months and now everyone’s talking about it!