Total Access Communication System

Vodafone (known then as Racal-Vodafone) opted for a £30 million turnkey contract[2] from Ericsson (ERA) to design, build and set up its initial network of 100 base station sites.

[3] Cellnet (then known Telecom Securicor Cellular Radio Ltd) used development labs in the facilities at General Electric (later made part of Motorola) based at Lynchburg, Virginia, United States.

TACS cellular phones were used in Europe (including the UK, Italy, Austria and Ireland) and other countries.

An automatic voice message was left in place for 12 months advising callers of the customer's new prefix.

The following countries had more than two batches of ESNs allocated to them: UK, Italy, Austria, China, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bahrain, UAE, Kuwait, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Australia.

First-generation Motorola 4500X mobile phone, which utilised ETACS
Vodafone used CMS8810 equipment designed by Ericsson some of which was made under licence by Racal Carlton Nottingham