Excel mobile phones

The Excel mobile phone range were developed by a British company called Tecnophone. These mobile phones were advertised as the smallest, lightest most intelligent mobile phones in the world at that time. In comparison to the mobile phones of today these really were cumbersome but were nowhere near as cumbersome in comparison to the mobile phone competition at that time, which included the Motorola and Stornophone and dedicated car phones.

Background

Excel communications was started by Cheshire-based entrepreneurs and the company was later handed over into the sole management of one individual Michael Goldstone. The company had a very heavy sales emphasis and therefore the sales agents were very highly paid and often travelled to work in their sports cars and smoked cigars in the office as a status symbol.

Technophone was owned by a Swedish man called Nils Mårtensson. Although making mobile phones in the UK under the Technophone label, the factory also made phones for other companies such as the German Bundespost and Italian company Olivetti.

Technophone was sold by Nils Mårtensson for around £50 million in the early 1990s to Nokia. The factory used by Technophone (Located in Camberley Surrey) was then used for the development and manufacture of the base stations which make the networks mobile phones work on (Nokia Networks). The mobile phone part of the business was split into various areas around the world and has become part of the Nokia Mobile Phones of today as we know it with phones designed and made globally.

Phones

The first phone in the range made by Technophone and sold by Excel communications was the M1 phone, following by the M2 and the M3, which was recorded as the world's first class 3 analogue portable phone. The M3 had links to Philips and may have been made by Philips. The M3 phone was not very successful as it was not only longer but bulkier that its predecessors.

Accessories

A range of accessories was also available for use with the mobile phone units. These accessories included:

*In car charger
*Hands free car kit
*Desktop charger
*Short stubby aerial
*Long aerial
*Leather carrying case

Networks

At the time the phones were needed to be contractually subscribed to one of the major mobile phone networks at that time which were either, Vodafone or Cellnet. Cellnet which was owned by British Telecom is now know as the O2 network.