History About to Repeat Itself
Written by Paul Newnes
Way back in 1992 in the UK there was a hotspot based phone service called Rabbit, launched by Hutchison (now Hutchison Whampoa). In essence a user bought a handset, resembling something between a mobile and a cordless phone that could be used to make phone calls within 100 meters of a hotspot. My home town, Manchester, had more or less full coverage by late 1992.
According to wikipedia 12,000 base-stations were live and at the peak the service had 10,000 subscribers. The service ceased in late 1993 due to price drops on the analog cellular networks and the ability for those networks to accept inbound calls.
The phone-less sibling of the iPhone, the iPod Touch, is now becoming the successor to the Rabbit. Loaded with Skype (or equivalent VoIP service) and a headset with microphone the iPod Touch is now a nearly fully fledged phone. With the new 3.0 iPhone / Touch operating system it will be a fully fledged outbound and inbound phone experience. Of course, the only place you’ll be able to make or receive calls is within range of a subscribed wifi hot spot.
The irony is that the cellular networks superseded the Rabbit, but the iPod Touch and VoIP could supersede the cellular phone.
