The Dude was a cartoon-like depiction of a man in his early twenties, drawn by Adam Long, Jodee Rich's brother-in-law.

In 1999 One.Tel's Next Generation 3GSM 1800 network was launched by joint CEOs of the mobile business, Stephen Moore and David Wright in Sydney, Australia.

The original thought process began with a simple initiative: they wanted to start a new telephone company, one that the average person would understand.

At that time, the company was firmly established in the telecommunications market, with operations in Australia, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Zürich, Frankfurt and Hong Kong.

One.Tel had three core product offerings: fixed wire long distance, Internet service provision and mobile telephony.

In December 1998 Project GSM was developed by Jodee Rich, Bradley Keeling, Kevin Beck, Stephen Moore and Alicia Crisp.

By May 2000 One.Tel had operations in seven countries and regions (Australia, UK, HKSAR, Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Germany), over 1,900,000 active customers and was connecting over 250,000/month globally.

One.Tel initially operated largely as a reseller of Optus services, receiving $120 for each mobile telephone customer that it attracted[citation needed].

During the year the company had commenced a 'Global Strategy', opening offices in Los Angeles, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Amsterdam and Zürich.

The company was unable to secure bank finance for the deal, and James Packer and David Lowy provided $5 million each to fund the purchase.

The One.Tel share price hits a high of $13.55 in the days leading up to the announcement of the deal, prompting an insider-trading probe by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.

The annual report included details of the remuneration of Rich and Keeling; both received a $560,000 basic salary and a $6.9 million bonus.

In a statement that would later prove ironic, James Packer told the Sydney Morning Herald in September that Rich was a visionary, that Brad and Jodee were excellent managers and that the share price would recover.

In a final attempt to give the company a chance to survive, News Limited and PBL agreed to subscribe to a rights issue at 5 cents per share to supply another $132 million in much needed cash.

[5] On 14 October 2005 the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the personal diaries of James Packer would be made available to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) to assist in its case against Jodee Rich.

The Supreme Court of New South Wales ruled that the diaries should be made available to ASIC but warned that the material should not be used "in a manner that simply raises prurient or titillatory interest that is not directly relevant to the case".

ASIC is reportedly seeking compensation of $92 million from Jodee Rich and the former One.Tel finance director, Mark Silbermann on the basis that they did not exercise their powers with respect to the company with due care and diligence.

[9] Following a four-year trial lasting 232 hearing days Justice Austin found that ASIC had failed to prove its case against the defendant directors.

In particular: These criticisms led Justice Austin to observe that "there is a real question whether ASIC should ever bring civil proceedings seeking to prove so many things over such a period of time as in this case.