NEC R5E 1000 9A 1987 - Motorola 8500X cell phone 1987 SIROP program phone

NEC R5E 1000 9A 1987 SIROP program phone
http://www.mobilecollectors.net/phone/3017/NEC+TR5E1000-9A

By the end of 1986 there were 100,000 mobile phone subscribers within the UK which doubled to 200,000 by the summer of 1987 and by the end of 1995, 7% of the UK population owned a mobile phone. The mobile phone also started to become accepted as part of society with companies seeking to showcase their models in feature films such as 20th Century Fox's Wall Street and television programmes such as the BBC's Only Fools and Horses



Vodafone Shop selling 1987 Motorola 8500X cell phone SIROP program
https://www.mobilephonehistory.co.uk/lists/by_year.html
https://www.rewindmuseum.com/brickphone.htm#8000x
Owning a mobile however, was expensive which meant that companies marketed the mobile to the business community showing the benefits of always being in contact with the office or your customers. For example, the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X cost £2,500 to purchase. On top of this you had a monthly contract fee with your mobile phone network provider and had to pay call charges too, calculated on a per minute basis. Even by the mid 1990s prices remained high. Connecting to the BT Cellnet network required you to pay a one-off connection charge of £50, a monthly contract fee of £55 with calls charged at 23p per minute during the peak times of Monday-Saturday 09:00 to 22:00 or 12p per minute at all other times. No wonder that call timers became a standard feature of mobile phones!