We stopped at the old red call boxes to phone customers desperate for news, phoned our "Storacall Answering Machine" at the Office to pick up messages. With staff out and about it was a nightmare..but we coped!.
Then in 1987 we purchased our first batch of mobile phones (the Panasonic "C") at £1500 each and we needed three of them! Even though calls cost some 25p each via the Provider, (Messrs Martin Dawes of Liverpool)... the improvement in our communications was exceptional.
We could thereafter. for example, phone from a hotel in Turku, Finland to an Engineer in his van ...on his hands free... navigating Hammersmith Broadway.
A major change came in the mid 1990s when our BT phone at the Office could have calls REDIRECTED to the mobiles (*21* and all that) It was all zippy activity and customer care thereafter.
It seems amazing that 25 years later the phones are so small, take photos, tune into the Internet, have keyboards,play tunes, draw images, look at Google Earth... and post messages on this Forum!
Isn't £780 a bargain>