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Ineke Botter
Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ Author
Member Since
January 2023
URL
/inekebotter
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Your phone, my life: Or, how did that phone land in your hand?
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* Note: these are all the books on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ for this author. To add more, click here.
“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 Tenderâ€� 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.”
― Your phone, my life: Or, how did that phone land in your hand?
― Your phone, my life: Or, how did that phone land in your hand?
“It was well after midnight when I put the thick document called ‘Invitation to Tender for a concession to provide GSM services in Hungaryâ€� 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.”
― Your phone, my life: Or, how did that phone land in your hand?
― Your phone, my life: Or, how did that phone land in your hand?
“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 fâ€� 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?â€� I said nothing, I just watched people pass by and felt like him; lone wolves we had become.”
― Your phone, my life: Or, how did that phone land in your hand?
― Your phone, my life: Or, how did that phone land in your hand?
“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.”
― Your phone, my life: Or, how did that phone land in your hand?
― Your phone, my life: Or, how did that phone land in your hand?
“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 roomsâ€� 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.”
― Your phone, my life: Or, how did that phone land in your hand?
― Your phone, my life: Or, how did that phone land in your hand?
“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.”
― Your phone, my life: Or, how did that phone land in your hand?
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.”
― Your phone, my life: Or, how did that phone land in your hand?
“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.”
― Your phone, my life: Or, how did that phone land in your hand?
― Your phone, my life: Or, how did that phone land in your hand?
“The winter started and it got extremely cold very quickly. There was very little to buy on the market or to eat at the Intourist hotel restaurant. When Luc was in town, we had a little bet going every day. Would we get chicken at lunch or at dinner, or both? Greasy Chicken Kiev. Fat would splatter onto your clothes when you stuck your fork into it. We couldn’t complain. We were negotiating a mobile license while the USSR was disintegrating and we saw the country, which had been an essential part of the centralized plan economy, falling apart quickly”
― Your phone, my life: Or, how did that phone land in your hand?
― Your phone, my life: Or, how did that phone land in your hand?
