The First Call
2G. Ring ring. Ring ring. The moment the call button was pressed after entering the number, the signal connected as if by magic. Any expert in mobile communications who witnessed this would have been baffled—how could a phone operate before its official launch? The truth was that 2G repeaters had already been installed in parts of San Francisco. They belonged to Nextcomcast, which was already operating 2G equipment.
Yoo Jae-won had every intention of entering the mobile telecommunications business in the United States someday, but not at the 2G stage. The 2G environment simply could not support the kind of mobile services he envisioned. A proper beginning would require at least 3G or 4G. While starting so late might seem to doom any chance of meaningful market share, by the time 3G reached its end and 4G preparations began, capital-strapped carriers would inevitably fall by the wayside. Acquiring them would solve the problem neatly.
Henry Samuel, president of Nextcomcast, had enthusiastically endorsed Yoo Jae-won's roadmap. He did, however, stress the need for telecommunications expertise and proposed that research into the development and operation of communication equipment proceed in parallel. It was only natural that TG Mobile was selected as the partner for this effort. Since Yoo Jae-won held a 49 percent stake in TG Mobile, half of its profits effectively belonged to him. President Lee Yong-kwon had also given his full support, and several units of equipment had been installed for preliminary testing.
Though the communication equipment was nearly complete, there were far more areas where Nextcomcast and ID Technology's technology was required than expected. Even something as basic as the billing system would have been difficult for TG to build on its own. Calculating the number of text messages sent or call minutes used per user, determining charges, and printing and mailing giro slips demanded a substantial system. Only companies like ID Technology, IBM, or Oracle possessed the capability to create such software, and President Lee Yong-kwon had naturally chosen ID Technology.
San Francisco's policy of actively supporting cutting-edge technology development—symbolized by Silicon Valley—had granted permission for test operations of the communication equipment. Thanks to that approval, even though the phone had only been completed days earlier, the antenna icon was fully lit and calls could be placed immediately.
"Hello?"
The phone rang three times before the line connected. The single word from the other end carried an unexpected wave of emotion. Though the device was as bulky as a brick, the call quality was excellent. What moved him most was seeing something he had personally shaped—from hardware to software—functioning properly.
"Tiffany? It's me!"
Yoo Jae-won deliberately kept his voice casual, masking his excitement.
"Oh, Jae-won."
"Is now a good time to talk?"
"Sure! I just finished my report, so I have all the time in the world."
A small misunderstanding had occurred. Yoo Jae-won had meant to ask about call quality, but Tiffany had taken the question as whether she was free to talk. It hardly mattered. The call with Tiffany proceeded without issue, and she herself noticed no difference from a regular landline, responding exactly as she always did.
Yoo Jae-won kept the conversation short—about thirty minutes—before hanging up. With Remington or Choi Kang-wook, he could rarely manage more than five minutes, but with Tiffany the minutes simply vanished. This call was no different. Before they ended, they had even arranged to meet briefly in front of her house an hour later.
"Right, thirty minutes and the battery's already down ten percent."
After the call, he noticed the battery indicator had dropped by a full tenth. Simple arithmetic put the continuous talk time at roughly five hours.
"Is that acceptable? Or insufficient?"
Accustomed to twenty-first-century mobile devices, Yoo Jae-won found five hours painfully short. The phone he had used right before his death could easily last a week on a single charge. Even the early smartphones lingering in his memory had managed around eight hours.
"I suppose it's time to visit the Memory Palace again."
He closed his eyes. When he opened them a few minutes later, the verdict was clear—fortunate or not, the first-generation 2G phones were all roughly the same. Continuous talk time hovered around four hours, often less in practice, and charging took more than eight hours.
"Still, we can't settle for this level."
The prototype outperformed existing models in every respect, yet there was ample room for improvement. Yoo Jae-won decided to carry the device himself for the time being, noting every inconvenience and fixing problems directly. The fundamental speed limitation, however, was beyond his control. While the shift from first-generation analog to fully digital communication had been achieved, transmission speeds remained dismal. The theoretical maximum was 64 Kbps, but real-world performance barely reached 30 Kbps.
A few years earlier, he had used a 2400 bps modem and thought it lightning fast. Now ADSL delivered a stable 8 Mbps, allowing Nextcom and countless other sites to move from text to images. Some were already experimenting with video streaming. The 30 Kbps speed he was seeing existed only because a test repeater stood on the hill behind his house; farther away, performance would drop sharply.
"I'll have to run real-world tests first. Now, how to distribute them?"
He considered the allocation of the ten prototypes that had been completed. Sending units to TG Mobile was obvious, but there was no need to send all ten. As a prototype, the final specifications would almost certainly change. A handful would suffice to test coverage in cities, rural areas, and mountainous terrain. The rest could go to people who actually needed phones.
"Remington and Choi Kang-wook would put them to good use. Tiffany should get one too. My parents… might be pushing it."
They were not professional beta testers, so precise data was unlikely, but at this stage a few casual impressions would be enough. Qualcomm's modem chips would continue through multiple revisions, and the phones themselves would undergo several design changes. As he listed potential recipients, Yoo Jae-won felt no concern about technology leaks. Once a finished product reached the market, competitors would inevitably acquire and disassemble units—it was simply how the IT industry worked. Reverse engineering, however, would not allow them to replicate the technology. A device as advanced as a mobile phone was protected from top to bottom by patents. The true purpose of reverse engineering was usually to check whether competitors had infringed on one's own patents.
The phone in Yoo Jae-won's hand was no exception. Its design, operating system, and every component were shielded by patents. Any company that infringed would find itself facing ID Group's notoriously aggressive legal team. In Korea, however, he could not be certain. Too many small companies had watched their hard-won technology stolen by chaebols that then paraded it as their own. Even in the twenty-first century the pattern persisted. He himself had once been a victim.
"Let them try. It won't happen twice."
America still offered some hope of fairness. Korean courts remained an unknown. Yet measures to reduce uncertainty in Korea had long been underway. Through Kim & Jeong, his influence within the Korean judiciary was steadily growing. If that proved insufficient, he was prepared for more direct intervention. Though he disliked the idea, the master plan had always accounted for the possibility that ID Group might one day occupy the seats traditionally held by chaebols within the judiciary.
After tending to these matters, Yoo Jae-won tidied his desk roughly fifty minutes later. It was nearly time to meet Tiffany. Since the occasion was casual, he saw no need for formal attire. Jeans and a T-shirt were enough. He slipped his wallet and a single box into his hands and stepped out.
Tiffany, waiting at the Sausalito seafood restaurant, was dressed just as simply. They had agreed long ago to keep things light when meeting near home, so there was no pressure. Even without effort, her beauty remained undiminished.
"Here. A gift."
The moment he saw her, Yoo Jae-won produced the box.
"Wow, what is it?"
True to her American upbringing, Tiffany opened it on the spot. Inside lay one of the remaining prototype phones, along with a charger the size of a fist, a USB cable, and a manual Yoo Jae-won had typed himself.
"What is this?"
"Exactly what it looks like—a mobile phone. We were just talking on one a little while ago."
He pulled his own device from his pocket to show her.
"So this is a 2G phone?"
Tiffany's eyes widened. A third-year computer science major with excellent grades and a boyfriend who owned ID Group, she possessed considerable background knowledge in IT. She had followed the news about 2G wireless communications, but she had never expected a working 2G phone to appear so soon.
"That's right. It arrived today, fresh off the line. Coverage will be limited to Sausalito, Stanford, and Silicon Valley for now. Step outside those areas and it'll go dead. Inside the coverage zone, though, phone-to-phone and phone-to-landline calls both work fine. International calls too. It's still a prototype, so unexpected issues could crop up. Let me know if anything strange happens."
Tiffany nodded absently, already absorbed in powering the device on and exploring its functions. The embedded operating system featured an intuitive interface optimized for the directional pad above the keypad, and she navigated it without hesitation.
"What's this phone called?"
After fiddling with it for some time, she looked up with the question. Yoo Jae-won, who had been explaining its features, suddenly found himself at a loss for words. He realized he had never given the 2G phone a name. Had it been a smartphone, "ID Phone" would have come naturally. But attaching that name to a 2G device felt inadequate—both functionally and symbolically. 2G was merely a transitional technology. Its greatest significance lay in the shift from analog to digital communication, yet it would become obsolete the moment smartphones arrived. To Yoo Jae-won it had always felt like a minor stepping stone, and as a result it had never received a proper name.
"You haven't named it yet?"
"I've been so busy building it that I never got around to it. Should we name it now? Any ideas?"
Tiffany shook her head.
"There are plenty of names. But this isn't just for us—it's meant to be sold in stores, right?"
"Yes. Since it's CDMA, it'll launch in the U.S. and Korea first."
"Then we can't just pick something easy. A name is directly tied to brand value. We should do proper research before deciding."
Tiffany clearly had a head for business. She had caught the importance of brand value, something Yoo Jae-won had underestimated. She was right. Ilseong Electronics had named its 2G phones Anycall—a massive success in Korea, yet unusable overseas because the word was slang for calling prostitutes.
"You're right. I'll have to commission a proper naming study."
In a country where capitalism had matured early, firms specializing in brand naming already existed. A professional agency would surely produce something suitable.
"Still, thank you. I can call you anytime now, can't I?"
"That's the whole point of a mobile phone. If anything happens or you just want to talk, call whenever."
"Got it!"
Having a phone would bring its own constraints on freedom, yet Yoo Jae-won preferred the mild inconvenience of constant connection over the frustration of being unreachable. Even though it was only a prototype, the arrival of the 2G phone made the world feel a little more open. Watching Tiffany continue to explore the device, he felt his anticipation for the changes ahead growing steadily.