science

Government Telephone Preference Scheme

Government Telephone Preference Scheme is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Government Telephone Preference Scheme rather than just read about it. In short: The Government Telephone Preference Scheme (GTPS) was a British system for limiting outgoing calls from landlines if the network was overloaded during an emergency. Numbers registered under the GTPS were still be able to make outgoing calls if the service was limited.

Key takeaways

Government Telephone Preference Scheme belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Government Telephone Preference Scheme to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Government Telephone Preference Scheme from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Government Telephone Preference Scheme (GTPS) was a British system for limiting outgoing calls from landlines if the network was overloaded during an emergency. Numbers registered under the GTPS were still be able to make outgoing calls if the service was limited. All telephones were still be able to receive calls. The scheme was decommissioned in 2017. There were three categories of use – the most essential were called Preference Category I, limited to 2% of lines of a telephone exchange. According to a British government document, they were intended to be limited to "lines vital to the prosecution of war and to national survival". The second category – Preference Category II – were for lines needed for the community and these and Preference Category II were limited in total to 10% of the exchange. All other users were in Category III. Within the Cold War, the GTPS would have been activated in the “Transition To War” period. The scheme was established in the 1950s. The scheme ceased to accept new numbers from 2013 due to the replacement by service providers of the infrastructure over which the scheme operated. The scheme was decommissioned in 2017. Phones on the scheme included armed forces headquarters, local authority emergency planning centres, emergency services such as police, fire and ambulance and public telephone boxes. Since 1992 the United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation and Royal Observer Corps operational lines have been deleted from the scheme. A similar scheme limiting mobile telephone access is called MTPAS (formerly ACCOLC).

See also AUTOVON Civil Contingencies Secretariat

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Government Telephone Preference Scheme

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Government Telephone Preference Scheme claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Government Telephone Preference Scheme before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Government Telephone Preference Scheme ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Government Telephone Preference Scheme

In research: Government Telephone Preference Scheme appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Government Telephone Preference Scheme in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Government Telephone Preference Scheme is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Emergency management in the United Kingdom, History of telecommunications in the United Kingdom, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Government Telephone Preference Scheme outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Government Telephone Preference Scheme in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Government Telephone Preference Scheme means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Government Telephone Preference Scheme out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Government Telephone Preference Scheme in simple terms?

Why does Government Telephone Preference Scheme matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Government Telephone Preference Scheme?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Government Telephone Preference Scheme.