What does LG stand for?
Q. Did you know the 'G' in LG Telecom stands for Goldstar?
A. From Mark van der Hoek (internal link):
Woah! So THAT is what happened to Goldstar? There's a cellular story here:
Way back when I was installing for a living, the biggest Authorized Agent for PacTel Cellular was a company called Cellular Communications Corp. My history in the biz has been interwoven with these guys. Remember that my first exposure to cellular was when that little two-way shop arranged for me to do a ride-along of some of those new-fangled cellular phone installations? That was for CCC, Irvine, their first of about 5 stores. I was service manager for the Colton (San Bernardino) branch later, and the branch manager for the Irvine store was a guy called Marv Madsen. He was the founder (after CCC was bought out/shut down) of his own Authorized Agent store in Riverside, and hired me to be his service manager when he opened his store. From there I went to work for PacTel (later to become AirTouch). All of that spans about 7 years, and during that time I worked at the Carson branch, and did a lot of freelance installation work for all the branches, primarily Irvine.
Now, I said all that to say all this. CCC was the company that invented the cellular call box. GTE later bought them to get that business, then about a year later (after a court ruling made reselling much less profitable) shut down the retail side. (Happened during the time I was service manager at Colton.)
They got pretty big on the retail side of things, and got to thinking pretty well of themselves. In fact, they decided to have a phone brand all their own. They bought the rights to a British made phone called the Walker. A huge phone, but indestructable. The truckers LOVED them. Lots of room in an 18 wheeler cab, so the size was no problem. Oh, but in a Mercedes? Not only was the control head huge, it CLUNKED with a nice metallic sproiiiing sound when you hung it up. Not good.
So, the intrepid service staff at the Irvine branch were tasked with finding an overseas company that could produce the Walker with a decent sized control head. The prototypes arrived just about the time GTE was taking over. The new management said, "Our own phone? We control the price and markup? GREAT! We're ordering 10,000!" Of course, the service folks (who later worked at AirTouch) were left screaming "NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" to a blank wall. All management heard was "our own phone brand". They didn't/wouldn't hear "unreliable", or "piece of junk", or "absolute trash" or "metal filings floating around inside the transceiver case".
It was a disaster.
Yep. It was made by Goldstar.
You knew there was a point behind this ramble, didn't you?
[Editor's note. My first cell phone was an original Walker installed in my company truck. This was around 1986. You could hammer nails with the control head or handset. The only thing to compare its toughness to are public payphone receivers. Yes, it was that tough. Oh, that nice metallic sproiiiing sound? Actually, it settled into its cradle with a very assuring CLUNK. Tom.)