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| One of the first background images used on the title page of this site | A later refinement of the background image in colour. Eventually this became a low-res strip on the side of all pages. | Clearnet's frog in a jar ads tried to compare having a landline to someone that couldn't leave his jar. |
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| One of the first Fidomatic ads featured a dog with a key in its back. I thought it was cute. |
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| Assorted Clearnet flowers and plants used in various ads |
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| I sent this magnolia flower to Clearnet, seeing that it seemed to fit the theme of their PCS product. | More Fido ads, this time featuring a dog with rum around its neck and a genetically-modified (?) Dalmation. |
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| Peter from Telus Mobility explains the workings of a cell site (Arcadia Park, UBC) during a tour of a base station | Telus' cell coverage of the west side of Vancouver (and confirmation that I had found all their sites) |
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| Testing out my Mike i1000+ with a laptop and data cable | To advertise Rogers' Pay-As-You-Go pre-paid cellular, coupons were distributed in newspapers offering 10 free minutes. Needless to say I made sure I scooped a bunch up. | The Nokia 6188 launch was big and still is the phone I use today. |
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Clearnet changed their themes every few months, but always used animals or plants. The duck is one of the more recent additions.
The other popular addition was the 'Rebate' frog. | Clearnet offered digital services to Halifax, plus a special plan just for the residents of Halifax to try and win customers over. |
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| In 1998, Fido ran a series of commercials featuring people that looked like their dogs. To recruit more potential look-alikes, Microcell Solutions had days where you could visit their Fido stores and have your picture taken for free. Everyone had their dogs and I had a knapsack. The local Fido rep kept asking me what was in the bag and I refused to tell her, but I did keep telling 'Slither' to calm down. She was much relieved when Bunalloo was pulled from the bag. | University of Victoria campus days involved me helping the guys out from Picocell. | One of the Simpsons episodes featured a cell tower being installed on their roof and the workings for the site being installed in Lisa's bedroom. The company that owned the site was called 'OmniTouch', a combination of real cellular providers 'Omni-Point' and 'Airtouch'. This site didn't even come close to a real cell site, but it was quite hilarious |
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| When Fido first launched in cities they used a dog with some sort of theme. Victoria's was a dog sniffing flowers (above); Vancouver was a dog under an umbrella; Calgary was a dog in a cowboy boot; etc... | Rogers ran a short series of monkeys using cell phone commercials in 1998 | Fido's days, nights, and weekends ads were targeted towards users that should be able to use their phones whenever they want to and not be restricted to plans that gave only free off-peak calling |
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| Clearnet ran a bunch of bus ads in Vancouver, including painting a whole bus with leaves and frogs | The Clearnet pinball game. My conclusion that their web staff had a little too much free time on their hands |
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