Telecommunications in the United Kingdom have evolved from the early days of the telegraph to modern fibre broadband and high-speed 5G networks.
History
Telegraph engineer William Preece demonstrated Alexander Graham Bell's telephone in Britain in 1877. The General Post Office (GPO) had by then nationalised electrical telegraphy in the United Kingdom. After an 1880 court decision found that the GPO's telegraph monopoly extended to the telephone, the GPO awarded licences to private companies to build telephone networks around the country. National Telephone Company (NTC) was a British telephone company from 1881 until 1911, which brought together smaller local companies. Under the Telephone Transfer Act 1911 it was taken over by the GPO in 1912. The telephone service in the United Kingdom was originally provided by private companies and local city councils, but by 1912–13 all except the telephone service of Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire and Guernsey had been bought out by the General Post Office. Post Office Telephones also operated telephone services in Jersey and the Isle of Man until 1969 when the islands took over responsibility for their own postal and telephone services. Post Office Telephones was reorganised in 1980–81 as British Telecommunications (British Telecom, or BT), and was the first nationalised industry to be privatised by the Conservative government. The civil telecoms monopoly ended when Mercury Communications arrived in 1983. Broadcasting of radio and television was a duopoly of the BBC and Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA): these two organisations controlled all broadcast services, and directly owned and operated the broadcast transmitter sites. Mobile phone and Internet services did not then exist. Broadcast transmitters, which belonged to the BBC and IBA, were privatised during the 1990s and now belong to Babcock International and Arqiva. British Rail Telecommunications was created in 1992 by British Rail (BR). It was the largest private telecoms network in Britain, consisting of 17,000 route kilometres of fibre optic and copper cable which connected every major city and town in the country and provided links to continental Europe through the Channel Tunnel. BR also operated its own national trunked radio network providing dedicated train-to-shore mobile communications, and in the early 1980s BR helped establish Mercury Communications', now C&WC, core infrastructure by laying a resilient 'figure-of-eight' fibre optic network alongside Britain's railway lines, spanning London, Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester. Regulation of communications has changed many times during the same period, and most of the bodies have been merged into Ofcom, the independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries.
Infrastructure
Domestic trunk infrastructure All communications trunks are now digital. Most are carried via national optical fibre networks. There are several companies with national fibre networks, including BT, Level 3 Communications, Virgin Media, Cable & Wireless, Easynet and Thus. Microwave links are used up to the 155 Mbit/s level, but are seldom cost-effective at higher bit rates.
International trunks The UK is a focal point for many of the world's submarine communications cables, which are now mostly digital optical fibre cables.
Broadcast transmission Arqiva provide services for content contribution, coding and multiplexing, distribution to the transmitter sites as well as maintaining the national transmitter network itself for television. Arqiva's radio network transmits 380 analogue and 300 digital radio stations across the UK via 1,450 radio transmitter sites. They operate the two commercial national multiplexes – Digital One and Sound Digital – and provide transmission services to the BBC for their national DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) multiplex as well as spectrum planning expertise for small-scale DAB license applicants. They also provide managed transmission services (MTS) and network access (NA) services for both analogue and digital channels from over 1,450 sites across the UK and they also provide contribution, coding and multiplexing and distribution for national and local DAB multiplexes.
Services
Television and radio broadcasting
Radio
In 1998, there were 663 radio broadcast stations: 219 on AM, 431 on FM and 3 on shortwave. There were 84.5 million radio receiver sets (1997). Today there are around 600 licensed radio stations in the UK.
Television
Currently, the United Kingdom has a collection of free-to-air, free-to-view and subscription services over a variety of distribution media, through which there are hundreds of channels for consumers as well as on-demand content. Since 24 October 2012, all television broadcasts in the United Kingdom have been in a digital format, following the end of analogue transmissions in Northern Ireland. Digital content is delivered via terrestrial, satellite and cable, as well as over IP.
Internet
The country code top-level domain for United Kingdom web pages is .uk. Nominet UK is the .uk. Network Information Centre and second-level domains must be used. At the end of 2004, 52% of households (12.6 million) were reported to have access to the internet (Source: Office for National Statistics Omnibus Survey). broadband connections accounted for 50.7% of all internet connections in July 2005, with one broadband connection being created every ten seconds. Broadband connections grew by nearly 80% in 2004. In 1999, there were 364 Internet service providers (ISPs). Public libraries also provide access to the internet, sometimes for a fee. In 2017, 90% of households were reported to have access to an internet connection. This percentage shows an increase in internet access from 80% in 2012 and 61% in 2007.
Mobile telephony
Mobile phone networks Timeline
First generation networks Cellnet was originally jointly owned by British Telecom and Securicor. BT eventually bought out Securicor's stake. The network became BT Cellnet and was then demerged to become O2. Vodafone. Both companies ran ETACS analogue mobile phone networks.
2G 2G is being phased out and replaced with 4G and 5G. The four mobile network operators have agreed to switch off their 2G networks by 2033.
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