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Editor's note. This letter was FAXed to me. I have transcribed the handwritten notes into type. I am working on communicating with the head office of Global Crossing for more information. The system Mr. Sherman refers to in Chicago was a cellular system. It's quite possible the Japanese called their system by a different name. Direct dialing without an operator was commonplace in 1978 with conventional car telephones in America. That may not have been known to Mr. Sherman. More comments below Sherman's letter:

5th Jan. 2001

Ms. Mary Godwin
Curator
C & W Porthcurno Trust

Dear Mary,

Norman Wheatley has written me to see if I could advise you about the introduction of a car telephone service in Bahrain. I have enclosed:

(a) A photograph of the equipment contained in a general booklet we produced about Bahrain telephone development when Bahrain was suddenly booming as a banking centre and we were hard pressed to keep up with demand -- (completely unexpected)

(b) A copy of an article from the Financial Times dated 4th November 1989 when an FT reporter visited Bahrain and we demonstrated the equipment. I used my daughters -- one in UK and one in Arizona, USA -- to show him that you could dial overseas from a car in downtown Manama to call any number overseas without the intervention of an operator.

From the above sources and my (failing?) memory the facts seem to be:

1. It probably was the first direct dialling system in the world. It was introduced about 1978 (according to the FT) and there was nothing like it in UK. I understood that USA were experimenting with a system in Chicago -- but had no such public system in use. We bought it from the Japanese, but they had designed it for their police force and there was no service available to the Japanese public. So it probably was the first available to the general public where calls could be made world-wide from a car telephone automatically and without the intervention for an operator.

[Editor's note: There was no number 2]

3. However, it was not a cellular system because Bahrain is very small and we didn't need that. We had direct radio service to probably more than one aerial.

4. It was ordered because the Ruler asked for such a service for confidential conversations and we decided it would be more enterprising to supply it as a public service. Of course the Royal Family car telephones were fitted first.

5. It was supplied by National and ordered by C&W Head Office. I visited Tokyo, Japan with a team of around 3 Head Office people to see the system. There should therefore be ample records in C&W Head Office files.

6. As the FT says, it cost about 4,000 pounds to have on car installation plus a year's rental, but there were plenty of Bahrain nationals well able to afford it an we did storming business and couldn't fit them fast enough. One worry was the fact that many wealthy Arabs had them fitted in new cars such as Rolls Royces and I was most unhappy that our engineers had to drill holes in brand new and very expensive cars. But in fact it all worked well and was a big success.

7. In fact, some time later I learned that the Royal Family had found out the big snag about car telephone services by radio means -- that anyone can listen to the conversations with an easily purchased scanner -- (a fact that became apparent to Prince Charles and Princess Diana later). I understand that wealthy Arabs with big boats off shore were listening to Bahrain telephone conversations. I understand that H.H. the Ruler then purchased his own system. I'm afraid that is all I can remember.

I hope it helps,

Best wishes,

Alec Sherman

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Bahrain and telecom in the late 1970s

In 1978 Bahrain was the first country to operate a commercial cellular system. (internal link) It was probably a simple, two cell affair as Gibson, quoting Personal Communications Technology maintains. Why Bahrain and not, say, Saudi Arabia? In the 1970s the former British colony of Bahrain was the center of telecommunications in the Middle East. Cable and Wireless operated the latest local and toll switching equipment, a satellite ground station, and a training academy for Middle Eastern workers. In Girdle Round The Earth: The Story of Cable and Wireless, Hugh Barty-King says:

"Through any of the nine automatic exchanges of the Bahrain Telephones internal network run by Cable and Wireless, under the direction of Alec Sherman, anyone could dial in from outside Bahrain and be connected via the satellite station direct to London. Those who wrote only Arabic could confidently telegraph their business associates abroad in the knowledge that the Message Switching Computer in Bahrain would switch telegrams written in Arabic script."

Barty-King also writes:

"[C&W's] wide ranging telecommunication system has made Bahrain a commercial and financial centre second to none in an area where oil revenues had brought other states very much greater wealth. The telecommunications build-up which began in 1947 as seen, and had been accelerated in 1968 which was going to expire in July 1982, had given the island a new role. The pearl fishing industry on which the economy once depended was no more; the first oil well to be found in the Gulf was all but spent; cheap natural gas had given birth to cheap aluminium smelting; Saudi Arabian oil was refined and ships of all nations repaired. But none of these activities justified the frenzied hotel and office building on the reclaimed land at Manamah. It was the availability of instant, cheap telephone, Telex, high speed data, facsimile and television communication which had attracted the money-brokers, the off-shore banking units, the off-shore traders, the international airline operators and news agencies like Reuters with their Monitor Project, the shipping companies and stockbrokers were giving Bahrain its new prosperity."

Click to enlarge

"The Kingdom of Bahrain is an archipelago of low lying islands located in the Arabian Gulf of the eastern shore of Saudi Arabia." This graphic from: http://www.miceonline.net/bahrain/intro.htm (external link)

Former operator J.R. Snyder Jr. (internal link) attests to Bahrain's equipment and efficiency as described in my notes for January 25th, 2005:

"When I worked in the JAX IOC [Jacksonville International Operator Center] the only real way to get to Saudi Arabi, Kuwait, UAE, etc. was through Bahrain. Our last resort was London, which we avoided like the plague. We dialed the Bahrain country code first on tandems and it would beep and then we entered the subsequent country code which usually resulted in a reorder (busy circuit). We had a top row of direct trunks to the Bahrain operator and they took great pride in their work and making sure your call got through one way or another."

Text link to CellTowerInfo.com