Our mobile phone networks here had letters. A network was an operator-based car phone network, probably in the 2m band. In 1974 (?) the B net with automatic dialing opened, the only analogue network that was ever compatible with its German equivalent and even had roaming. However, the phones were still huge, so they were always built into cars, and it wasn't a cellular network. Some time in the early 80ies the C net (NMT) came up and was in service until 1997. 450 Mhz cellular network, 0663 code + 5-digit number. The phones were still pretty bulky. In 1988 the ETACS D net went in service. 900Mhz cellular, 0663 + originally 6-digit numbers, later 7 digits were used for new subscribers. In 1995 the first GSM network came up, named E net, soon renamed to A1 with the advent of private providers. D soon became unfashionable, even though the Mobilkom tried to get more customers by drastically lowering their rates (in the end D was the cheapest mobile service in history) and their B-Free compact prepaid service. In the last days of D there were about 90000 of the once about 200000 subscribers left and they decided to pull the plug because UMTS needed the frequencies. i'm still mad at them because when i bought the phone they assured me the network would be operating _at least_ until 2007. When i got the phone in 2001 it was already mostly for the fun of seeing all jaws drop whenever I gave somebody my number. 0663 numbers were pretty much out of fashion back then, most young people didn't even know D still existed. Main disadvantage of D: with the old equipment Mobilkom had you couldn't send nor receive SMS. Since SMS is the most important thing for younger cell phone users (When i was about 14 I knew a lot of people who _never_ made a call but sent SMS all the time) D was out of question for them.
I had an Ericsson EF 738, a really nice, small phone. My Siemens S10 GSM I got afterwards was much bulkier.
