Your phone, my life: Or, how did that phone land in your hand?
Ineke Botter
Top 10 Best Quotes
“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 Tender’ 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.”
“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”
“The receptionist called. Nervous. I asked what the problem was. ‘There is a General and soldiers here for you Ma’am’, she said. ‘Okay, let them come upstairs to the meeting room’, I instructed her. A few minutes later, the elevator arrived and indeed a General and his helpers, in full uniform and armed, entered. ‘What can I help you with General?’ I asked. He started to threaten me, ‘We need access to your network. You need to buy digital interception equipment and install it before launch.’ This was really something we hadn’t taken into account. A bit disturbed Lone wolves 63 by all the overwhelming force, I promised to look into that. It turned out that only an Israeli company produced this probing equipment. Very expensive too.”
“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 rooms’ 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.”
“The former banker helped us with the financial plans, figuring out how much we could afford to bid in the auction. We concluded that we could certainly bid USD 45 million for a 20-year license in Hungary. Swedish Telecom was very confident, their CEO had said in radio interviews that he thought that 1 in 4 people would have a mobile phone by the year 2000. This was overly optimistic according to the other consortium partners. They were more conservative and we had difficulty persuading them to put up more money”
“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.”
“Spring came and finally everything was ready for the official signature ceremony that I had managed to organize with the help of the brilliant Olec and his kind colleagues. The rumor that Mr. Delikatny would be forced to step down was spreading fast. I hoped for the best. Slowly, the large conference room at the Ministry filled up with the oblast directors. All of a sudden, someone came running to Olec and shouted ‘Minister ni pisal’ (the Minister will not sign). My Russian was still very poor, but I did understand ‘ni pisal’ immediately and also the consequences, if that really was the case. We would have to start again and redraft the Shareholders Agreement. I had to see the Minister at once, as every action we had scheduled following this signature session would be at risk. After hours of nervous running around by many civil servants, the Minister signed.”
“Shortly after that nerve-racking event, Minister Delikatny, whom I really liked, did indeed disappear, but at least UMC was ‘in formation’. UMC would make a real and huge change in this highly secretive world. I still had a long to-do list. First, I needed to open a bank account to transfer the share capital. There was only one, very new, international bank, the First Ukrainian bank, a subsidiary of a Dutch bank that I hoped would be able to help. No such luck, there were no transfer processes in place yet. I decided to simply put the required USD 10,000 in my shoes next time I would travel. Fifty notes in each shoe was surely not a problem. I delivered the money to the bank on my next stay in Kiev and we were up and running. We could officially start building now.”
“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.”
“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 f… 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?’ I said nothing, I just watched people pass by and felt like him; lone wolves we had become.”
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Book Keywords:
ceremony, project-management, telecommunications, ukraine-russia, cell-phone, ukrainian-mobile-communications, lebanese, consequences, cell-phones, inspirational, lone-wolves, mobile, soldier, tender, mobile-phone, engineers, mobile-phones-telecommunications, telecommunication, christmas, swedish, adventure, winter, nokia, docusign, eating, mobile-phones, hungary, cellphones-kiev
