Pelephone
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- See main article: Communications in Israel.
Pelephone (Hebrew: פלאפון pronounced: /pelefon/) is an Israeli-based telecommunications company, founded in 1986 as a joint venture between Motorola and Tadiran though today it is fully owned by Bezeq. It was the first company to offer mobile phone services in Israel. Due to this, the brand-name "Pelephone" became the ubiquitous term for mobile phones in Israel (even for those of other service providers, see genericized trademark), although in recent years the term "nayad" (=mobile) has perhaps overtaken it in this generalized sense.
The company currently employs about 4,500 empolyees, and has over two million active customers.
The literal meaning of the word in Hebrew can be translated as wonder-phone or magic-phone.
The network started as AMPS/NAMPS in the 800/850Mhz band. In the mid-to-late 1990s it converted to IS-95 CDMA and later added CDMA2000/EV-DO capabilities as well.