The UK’s first mobile phone call was made in 1985 on the newly launched Vodafone network. Michael Harrison, the son of former Vodafone Chairman Sir Ernest Harrison, was the first to test the system, calling his father at midnight on January 1, 1985.

Michael Harrison secretly left his family’s New Year’s Eve party at their home in Surrey to surprise his father, calling him from London’s Parliament Square. Harrison made the historic call from one of the first mobile devices – a Transportable Vodafone VT1, which weighed 5kg and had +/-30-minutes of talk time. Harrison recalls that the line was crystal clear, although the excited shouting of New Year’s Eve revellers in London created considerable background noise.

Photographers captured the moment—the culmination of three years of hard work since the bid to win the licence in 1982 was made.

Later, on that New Year's Day, 1985, a crowd gathered at St Katherine’s Dock in London to watch comedian Ernie Wise make the first "public" mobile phone call. He arrived with the same Transportable device in a 19th-century mail coach, highlighting one of the oldest forms of communication, the letter, to contrast it with the speed and convenience of the new Technology.

Wise’s call was received at the original Vodafone headquarters, where a handful of employees were based in an office above an Indian restaurant in Newbury, Berkshire.

Though heavy and cumbersome, the first generation of mobile phones were sold in the UK from 1984, even before the first products were available and the network was officially live.

The demand for fully portable cellular phones was such that Vodafone took over 2,000 orders before Harrison's historic call. By the end of 1985, over 12,000 devices had been sold, and the unit cost was around £2,000.

In the UK, by 2011, it was estimated that more calls were being made using mobile than wired devices.

Today, 39 years later, in 2024, Vodafone's customers range from all ages in Europe, India, and Africa to the world’s largest multinational businesses. While business has changed beyond recognition over the years, Vodafone's goal and purpose haven’t—to continue to empower users, whoever and wherever they are, through connectivity as mobile, broadband, IoT*, AI, and digital technology continue to transform society in ways unimaginable in the 1980s.

(*IoT - "Internet of Things" describes devices with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other communication networks. The Internet of Things encompasses electronics, communication, and computer science engineering.)