Vodafone at 40: “I’m humbled by what it’s turned into”

Ivan Donn, who sold the company’s first phone in September 1984, looks back at the company’s past and speaks about his hopes for the future.

Technology, and the pace at which it evolves and changes, can be intimidating and disorienting for some people. Not so for Ivan Donn. Now an independent telecoms consultant, Ivan started his career back in 1984 as one of the earliest salespeople at what was then a small start-up – Vodafone. Ivan’s experience, spanning the four decades since Vodafone’s founding, has given him a long-term perspective – on the company and the wider tech industry – which he shared with Vodafone UK News.

Despite having left Vodafone UK back in 2004, Ivan has fond memories of his time at the company. “For me, Vodafone was a vast blank canvas, which everyone had an opportunity to take their paint brush to. We were in uncharted territory, and so long as you did things that worked, you kept on being given more canvas. We made decisions very quickly inside the organisation. I think we were very flexible and vibrant with a very ‘can do’ attitude,” Ivan reminisced.

As an example, Ivan remembered how, in early 1985, he convinced the company’s big cheeses to quickly start selling ‘hand portable’ Motorola phones at £2,799 plus VAT, at a time when Vodafone only sold ‘transportable’ phones, such as the Mobira-made VT-1, which weighed 5.5kg.

Ivan credits this in part to Vodafone’s origins as an upstart challenger to other, larger telecoms companies, such as BT. Another contributing factor, Ivan believes, was the need for the company to quickly start serving everyday people, and not just the businesses and government bodies that were the bulk of its very earliest customers.

Despite Ivan’s affinity for technology in general and mobile networks in particular – which he credits to a childhood love of ham radio – he continues to be taken aback by the exponential increase in demand for mobile communication. A communal appetite which started during his time at Vodafone and shows no sign of slowing down.

Ivan explains: “Back then, we predicted an end game of 1 million mobile customers for the entire UK! We didn’t anticipate how quickly the technology of phones would develop, how quickly their prices would fall or how desirable they would be to everyone.”

Ivan noted how this relentless pace of technological change has continually reshaped the industry, on occasion consigning many household names to the history books or transforming them beyond recognition – from Nokia to Blackberry. He believes the key to survival is the willingness for people to admit to what they don’t know or understand and to bring in new people with fresh thinking to plug those gaps.

As more and more people across the world gain access to phones and ever more readily accessible communication, Ivan remains optimistic that this will have positive consequences: “As communication gets better, hopefully the world becomes a more informed and understanding community.”

As for the Vodafone network, which he did so much to popularise, Ivan’s affection remains undimmed: “I’m humbled by what it’s turned into. It’s exceeded every projection, every expectation.”

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