O2

yeah and they were very expensive some of those early car phone setups cost around four five thousand pounds that's over ten twelve thousand in today's money and in 1983 British Telecom the big national operator was recruited Mo to help design the UK's first cellular network to support the new car phones.

And the division was called BT Cellnet, would later become O2, a company you may have heard of.

A year into the job, Mo had a second big revelation.

At a trade fair in the United States, Motorola engineers lent him a prototype of a handheld mobile phone for the day.

So tell me a little bit about phone signal.

Because at the moment, if you're on O2, for example, no chance.

If you're on EE, you might get a message out.

But what's the latest there? Oh,

A technology company was invited in to improve the infrastructure.

And they have spent... hundreds of thousands, if not more, on pulling in new technology into the stadium that will enable everybody who has a mobile phone to get a signal.

But how it works is that company then goes to the operators like O2 and the others, and strikes a deal with them to be able to carry their signal better.

So in effect, Arsenal have outsourced the service provision.

And you can maybe maximize your inventory there.

by doing both I once remember having a chat with someone at the RFU the rugby football union and I wondered why now that now that O2 is Virgin Media O2 why the home shirt isn't O2 and the away shirt is Virgin Media and you get double the you know what I mean just maybe looking at and this person said that you know that hadn't been a conversation they'd had with VMO2.

And they're not saying they would or wouldn't, but like, I'm starting to wonder whether that's the way you start looking at maybe the men would be O2 and the women would be Virgin Media or vice versa.

There are ways brands can maybe look at what they're doing now.

The other thing I'd say is kind of women's sport, I feel like still needs some help with team sports, right? Like rugby is a great one.

I will give you one.

I don't think I've told anyone this, but I went to Olivia Dean the other week.

um with the wonderful people at AEG who own the O2 and it was my sister's first ever hospitality box and um I don't think I should be saying this I'm gonna say it anyway um and um I was sat next to Adele and that was a bit of a pinch

I'm trying to think who I've missed.

Adam from the VMO2 team.

Oh, yeah.

Hi, Adam.

And then a guy called Rob Joyce, who actually came from Harrogate.

He lives up in the north.

And he's from VMO2.

And he basically is in charge of all the mobile network stuff.

And I was like, no, not giving away my age, but I was like 1998, right? I was like 18 at the time.

Fast forward, I worked for BT CellNet before we became O2.

So this was like early 2000s.

But I was like doing part-time work and I was a top salesperson.

Now, what network are you on?

O2.

Okay, that's a shame.

Yeah, me too.

But I'm s- so, but I'm imagining that within a couple of years the other networks will come on board too.

Yeah, they will.

And O2's always, was always, also was always slower.

It was slow to come onto the iPhone in the very first case.

Unbelievable.

"What are you talking about?" So I went and I met the, the guy who had called me and I met two other of their senior leaders within their brand consulting department, and they said, "Look, we really want you to come and work for us, and we want you to basically head up running this new account that we've just won," which was O2, and it was working on England rugby team, and the England rugby team had just won the Rugby World Cup at that stage, and Arsenal.

So I was like, "Wow, this is amazing.

Yeah, 100%." And when I said I was leaving, Travelex said, "Where you go, we go." So I was really lucky in that I turned up to IMG, who really wanted me to work for them, with a paying client.

So I, I hit the ground running quite quickly and it was great.

I was there, can't even remember, maybe three years, and worked across so many different things.

I started out doing O2 and that kind of quickly developed into some pretty seismic pieces of work with them, which I'll talk about in a second.

I did Travelex.