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Your phone, my life: Or, how did that phone land in your hand?

Book by Ineke Botter · 11 quotes · Mobile, Mobile Phones, Telecommunications

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Your phone, my life: Or, how did that phone land in your hand? Quotes

“It was a late Friday afternoon when old Mr. Bartha came to my office. I offered him a drink and gave him a quick rundown of what we needed. I had prepared a Memorandum of Understanding and handed it over to him. When he saw the daily fee, which was market rate, but lowish, he suddenly became very emotional and cried. He said he couldn’t accept. His company was almost bankrupt, hundreds of families with children were very poor now. Couldn’t I raise the fee a little bit, he asked, shyly. I looked at him and saw him struggling, my heart broke, this old man was trying to help so many people. I thought about my budget and about what I would have to explain to the new CEO, Christian, a nice and competent Norwegian, and decided instantly to raise the fee. And as for my budget and explaining it to Christian, I’d cross that bridge when I get to it, I thought silently.”

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“One point seemed to be very dear to the proud Minister; the company name had to be UMC, Ukrainian Mobile Communications. We agreed, understanding that this project was his baby and that he, too, was taking an enormous risk in the very uncertain and rapidly changing political environment. This was the still the USSR, where for obvious reasons, no normal citizen was allowed to have a phone. The waiting list was about 17 years for Communist Party members with a clear need. Fixed line penetration stood at about 7 or 8 percent.”

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“Shortly after that nerve-racking event, Minister Delikatny, whom I really liked, did indeed disappear, but at least UMC was ‘in formation’. UMC would make a real and huge change in this highly secretive world. I still had a long to-do list. First, I needed to open a bank account to transfer the share capital. There was only one, very new, international bank, the First Ukrainian bank, a subsidiary of a Dutch bank that I hoped would be able to help. No such luck, there were no transfer processes in place yet. I decided to simply put the required USD 10,000 in my shoes next time I would travel. Fifty notes in each shoe was surely not a problem. I delivered the money to the bank on my next stay in Kiev and we were up and running. We could officially start building now.”

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“We were ready to submit the bid documents in sealed folders on May 28, at 10 am, as stipulated by the Ministry. Luckily, someone did a final check of our output against the ‘Invitation to Tender’ once more, just to make absolutely sure we hadn’t forgotten anything. He discovered at the last minute that the bid team leader had to initial all pages by hand. Since systems like DocuSign didn’t exist yet, Richard and I spent the whole evening and night signing pages, with me turning the pages and Richard initialing each one. There were thousands. Richard’s arm was hurting badly at the end of it, but we got it done in time. We put the folders in sealed envelopes and delivered it all by hand. One minute late and we would have missed an opportunity that we had already spent over USD 10 million on.”

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“The mobile industry quickly developed, and lawyers, investment bankers, consultants and contractors offered their services. The feeling of ownership of the projects and the effort of getting networks up and running within the shortest possible time span was gigantic. Engineers slept in their cars to make sure that they could start early mornings, ‘war rooms’ were kitted out with huge maps, project timelines, pictures and milestone markers. Contests ongoing between different teams in the specific country regions where we were building. Employing a thousand people in no time and generating work for tenfold that number; network and other suppliers, construction companies, distributors, retailers and other often highly skilled third parties.”

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“It was well after midnight when I put the thick document called ‘Invitation to Tender for a concession to provide GSM services in Hungary’ on my bedside cabinet. The document had been reissued on October 15, 1992. I had quickly scanned, and hopefully absorbed, the main points. The tender was organized as a beauty contest and the winning consortia would be allowed to participate in the auction to be held next year. There were two concessions up for grabs, one that would surely go to the existing NMT operator Westel (US West & Bell Atlantic) and one for a new party. It was shut eye time now, I was tired. The flight to Budapest would leave early in the morning, so I had only a few hours to rest.”

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“The former banker helped us with the financial plans, figuring out how much we could afford to bid in the auction. We concluded that we could certainly bid USD 45 million for a 20-year license in Hungary. Swedish Telecom was very confident, their CEO had said in radio interviews that he thought that 1 in 4 people would have a mobile phone by the year 2000. This was overly optimistic according to the other consortium partners. They were more conservative and we had difficulty persuading them to put up more money”

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“Impact of the mobile phone While 2G and 3G basic and feature phones were tremendously important for people to open their worlds, be able to communicate whenever and wherever they wanted and made life so much easier, 4G enabled the smartphone to revolutionize our lives in ways that go well beyond how we communicate. Besides calling and texting, almost 4 billion people around the world are connected to the mobile internet and use their devices to send money, navigate, book cab rides, follow the news, learn a new language, watch movies, listen to music, play video games, memorialize vacations, and, not least of all, participate in social media.”

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“I started to organize the procurement process from Denmark, which was good and not good. Good because I had experienced procurement people and engineers close by, and not good because I discovered quickly that we were required to put contracts out to tender under strict EU rules that would thwart our ability to launch on time. That, in turn, would mean that we could risk high penalties and/ or lose the license. After issuing the Request for Proposal and one round of intense negotiations with a couple of network suppliers, we decided to move the procurement team to Hungary. There were two suppliers left, a newcomer called Nokia and the old Ericsson, Finns and Swedes. The final negotiations could start.”

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“Nokia and our team worked day and night; sites were selected, even churches, masts were built, and equipment was installed. We were heading for launch. Dead tired but things moved forward. Richard’s wife was screaming and shouting on the phone, where the f… he was, she would divorce him. It was early evening after our Christmas party, the offices deserted. Very cold outside, big snowflakes falling. Richard and I were looking out of the big 6th floor windows of our new office in Pest. Silently we stood together. We had grown close that year. He said sadly, ‘You see those people there Ineke? They have a life and we will improve it when they get cheap mobile phones. And we?’ I said nothing, I just watched people pass by and felt like him; lone wolves we had become.”

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“The first time someone suggested that I write about my adventures was when I had just arrived in Lebanon. He looked at me with sincere curiosity, puzzled too. We were seated in a large kitchen at a friend’s house, having lunch. It was a beautiful yellow brick house, on top of a hill, very bright, the garden in bloom, wonderful colors and my story of poverty and gloom in Kosovo couldn’t be a greater contrast. We drank lovely Lebanese white wine, ate warm flatbread with labneh, foul, sujuk, and plenty of other mezze dishes.”

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