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130 years in the UK telecoms industry – major milestones - 11/10/10

1879      

First telephone exchange in England

1912

All National Telephone Company exchanges taken over by the Post Office which

became the monopoly supplier of telephone services throughout the UK

19340

Imperial & International Communications re-named Cable & Wireless 1947 Cable & Wireless nationalised

1956      

Opening of the first trans-Atlantic telephone cable

1959      

First pay on answer coin box (STD), replacing ButtonA/Button B, introduced

1965

Telecom Tower opened for service

1966

Change to all figure telephone numbers

1969

The Post Office ceased to be a Government department and was established as a State public corporation

1972

Ten millionth telephone line installed in Britain.

1978

First telephone call made over optical fibre system developed by Post Office and STC

1981
Cable & Wireless (C&W) privatised  

British Telecom created as a public corporation responsible for telecommunications The supply, installation and maintenance of all customer premises equipment was liberalised, except for the supply, installation and maintenance of the first telephone instrument and the maintenance only of all Private Automatic Branch

Exchanges(PABXs) except stored program control digital ones

1982

Mercury Communications Limited (MCL) part of C&W  granted a licence to operate a fixed link network in competition with BT

From 1982 onward new telephone sockets were introduced and it was then possible to plug in your own phones

1983

Government announced abolition of monopoly on the first telephone instrument

Cellnet (part of BT ) and Racal-Vodafone granted licences to operate national cellular mobile communications networks

Government made duopoly statement - only BT and MCL to be allowed to provide fixed link network for the next seven years

1984

Cable Authority formed to allow licencing for cable TV in UK

1986

ISDN introduced

1987

Digitalisation of BT’s trunk network completed

1988

Racal floats Vodafone

1991

In 1991 the government enabled independent retail companies to bulk buy capacity and resell it. As part of this deal British Telecom took the opportunity to rebrand as BT and use it’s greater freedom  to expand abroad.

1992

First SMS “text” message sent over Vodafone’s GSM network. It read “Merry Christmas”.

1993

Mercury launches first GSM 1800 mobile phone service as One2One, which ­became T-Mobile in 2002.

1999 The telecoms market was booming. In Europe it was driven by deregulation and in the UK by a lot of consolidation and the need for businesses to become more efficient. C&W sells MCL to NTL

2000

Y2K bug is nothing more than a minor pest on January 1st. In April the bids for 3G mobile licences in the UK reached £22.5bn.

BT and AT&T call off rumoured merger talks as AT&T hits financial hard times.

2001

The telecom industry continues to lose value on the stockmarket.

Carrier Pre Select introduced – ability to choose carrier without access code

BT floats Cellnet, later to become 02, to reduce debt levels

2002

The telecommunications market has yet to recover, and the year was characterised by cutbacks, mergers and acquisitions. Cable & Wireless and Mitel announced job losses late in the year, and Worldcom performed badly throughout after being the subject of an accounting scandal.

VoIP starts to be recognised as the future of business telecoms systems

2003      

OfCom replaces Oftel.

End of BT's monopoly on directory enquiries service.

2004

ITSPA – the Internet Telephony Providers Association formed to work with VoIP providers

2006

BT splits off OpenReach to provide wholesale services for resale by other vendors.

It is responsible for managing the UK access network on behalf of the telecommunications industry. Openreach manages the UK’s telecommunications infrastructure, treating the rest of BT on an equal basis as other operators. It is one of four businesses which make up BT Group. The other three are BT Retail, BT Wholesale and BT Global Services, which all focus on their own markets and customers.

BT also took the opportunity to set up BT local business a network of 77 local franchises which interface with businesses.

2007

Following NTL's acquisition of Virgin Mobile, the NTL and Telewest services were rebranded Virgin Media. This effectively completed the unification of the UK cable network

2009

Cloud Net formed to be the provider of choice for small business VoIP Services

Written by David Hill, Chairman, Cloud Net