Rabbit was a British location-specific (Telepoint) telephone service backed by Hutchison, who later went on to create the Orange GSM mobile network, followed by 3. The Rabbit network was the best-known of four such services introduced in the 1980s, the others being Phonepoint, Mercury Callpoint and Zonephone. Although Hutchison had been issued a licence for Rabbit in 1989, it took until May 1992 before the service was launched. Telepoint services such as Rabbit allowed subscribers to carry specially designed (CT2) home phone handsets with them and make outgoing calls whenever they were within 100 metres of a Rabbit transmitter.

[edit] Rollout

The initial network only supported outgoing calls but offered paging and messaging facilities as standard on all customer accounts. The service was rolled out after extensive tests with a thousand users and two thousand "base stations" located across the UK.

Original plans were for twelve thousand base stations to be placed around the UK by December 1992. The first service was launched in Greater Manchester in May 1992 with the entire city centre of Manchester covered with Rabbit base stations. The service was then rolled out to the rest of the North of England and there was nationwide coverage in the autumn of 1993. At the height of Rabbit's operations they had twelve thousand base stations and ten thousand customers in the UK.

[edit] Closure

Rabbit Base Station Sign, Penny Meadow, Ashton-Under-Lyne, Greater Manchester

The service ceased in December 1993, only 20 months after being launched. Two thousand customers were with Rabbit at the time the service closed. The failure of Rabbit can be mainly attributed to the fall in costs of analogue mobile networks Cellnet and Vodafone, which also accepted incoming calls. The imminent conversion of these mobile phone networks to the modern-day GSM standard finished the conversation. Hutchison Whampoa lost around $183m from the failure of Rabbit^[1] but later went on to found the successful Orange mobile phone network.

Wall-mounted signs advertising the Rabbit base stations are still visible in various parts of the UK some 15 years since the Rabbit service ended^[2].

[edit] Home use

Many of the Rabbit CT2 telephones were sold with a home base station as a home CT2 cordless telephone system and these continued to be used for many years after the closure of the Rabbit network.

Rabbit CT2 cordless telephone

Rabbit CT2 cordless telephone with home base station

[edit] External links

• BBC Article - History lessons for wireless networks
• Article with Photos of a Rabbit Handset and Base Station
• Oftel - Brief History of UK Telecoms
• Report on Digital Cordless Networks from 1992 (Dr. Walter H. W. Tuttlebee)
• The Rabbit Setup Kit - Science & Society Picture Library

[edit] References

1. ^ http://cgi.cnn.com/ASIANOW/asiaweek/features/power50/li.html
2. ^ http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexmartin81/3825998524/