Zonephone occupied a short-lived niche in technology in the era when access to cordless telephones was growing and before ‘mobiles’ became available to many more people.

In the late 1980s the second generation of short-range cordless telephone (CT2) technology, known as Telepoint, was in development. Many people thought that Telepoint technology could compete with the young mobile phone industry as the infrastructure was on a more domestic scale and, therefore, much cheaper to install.

Four Telepoint services were launched: Rabbit, Phonepoint, Mercury Callpoint and Zonephone. Users could carry their Telepoint phone with them and make calls if they were within range of a public base station. The quickly expanding mobile phone industry rapidly outstripped Telepoint systems. The last operator, Rabbit, withdrew in 1993.

Ferranti Zonephone, launched in October 1989. The service only managed to secure around 500 subscribers, and closed in July 1991.