The first mobile call was made by Martin Cooper in Manhattan on 3 April 1973 using a prototype of Motorola's DynaTAC 8000X - the first commercially available mobile that took 10 hours to charge for half an hour of call time and cost $3995.

Unfortunately a call made to celebrate the 50 year 'semiversary' failed as a verification code sent to the device to authorise the call was never received due to problems with the signal.

A mobile network service engineer explained to FNN:

Today, 2-stage verification (2SV) is pervasive in the mobile industry. If you don't receive the code then you may not be able to make a call or access an app. 2SV is marketed as a security device but in fact it's just way to reduce stress on the network since most people give up when they fail to receive the code for whatever reason.

EU spokesperson Ursula Von Richthofen commented:

Here in the EU we are 'sunsetting' 2SV in favor of 3SV. This means you will be sent 2 consecutive codes to two different devices to verify it's you. Thus making it even more likely that something will go wrong and you will give up trying to make a call or access an app. Any 3SV failures will be subject to a special EU tax to help provide more Leopard tanks to Ukraine. Vorsprung durch Teknik!