Since 1960 the UK telecoms industry has gone through changes that have shaped our society, writes Richard Wilson
1961: Plessey, ATE and Ericsson Telephones combine to form a single British-based telecoms manufacturer. The Post Office is created as a separate entity by the Government.
1962: Telstar, the first telecoms satellite is launched and the first experimental electronics telephone exchange opens at Highgate Wood, London.
1964: Post Office runs first trials of pulse code modulation (PCM) on the telephone network. First telephone system installed by British Rail between Derby and London.
1965: London gets its first mobile communications service with a radiophone system fitted to Post Office vehicles. Post Office Tower built in London.
1972: Ten millionth telephone line installed in Britain.
1976: Last manual phone exchange closes. New telecoms manufacturer, STC emerges from US parent ITT.
1978: First telephone call made over optical fibre system developed by Post Office and STC.
1979: System X digital telephone exchange launched with first trial exchange installed in Scotland.
Electronics Weekly 1980
1981: British Telecom separated from the Post Office to run the national telecoms network.
1983: Government licenses second national telephone operator, Mercury Communications, a subsidiary of Cable & Wireless, to compete with British Telecom (BT). System X brought into service by BT in Coventry.
1984: BT privatised by Government.
1985: First cellular telephone services launched by two operators – Cellnet, jointly owned by BT and Securicor, and Vodafone, a division of Racal.
1986: BT installs first digital exchange supplied by Ericsson as an alternative to UK-designed System X exchanges supplied by Plessey and GEC.
1987: Digitalisation of BT’s trunk network completed. BT researchers at Martlesham Research Labs demonstrate first all-optical regenerator opening the way for multi-gigabit per second optical fibre networks.
1988: 1,000th System X exchange opened by BT. Racal floats telecoms business which becomes Vodafone.
1989: Government issues seven mobile comms operator licences. Four for a low cost, one-way service called telepoint which flopped – and three new cellular licences for digital GSM services put the UK at the head of the new mobile phone revolution. But the UK’s decline as an influential supplier of telecoms hardware continued with GEC and Siemens buying Plessey out of GPT telecoms – which became Marconi when Siemens sold its stake to GEC.
1991: Vodafone established as separate company. First GSM digital mobile services launched.
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: C&W sells its telecoms network business Mercury Comms to cable firm NTL.
1999: GEC sells defence business to British Aerospace (now BAE Systems) leaving it with the Marconi telecoms business.
Electronics Weekly 1999
1999: Motorola’s Scottish mobile phone production facility at Easter Inch employs 3,100 staff and is one of Motorola’s main handset factories in Europe.
2001: Manufacturing exodus begins as Motorola shuts Easter Inch in Scotland, with a loss of 3,100 jobs. Compaq cuts 700 jobs at its Scottish PC assembly plant. Nortel cuts 900 UK jobs as dot.com bubble bursts.
2002: Bath-based fabless start-up Picochip delivers first chips for 3G basestations.
2005: Ericsson buys Marconi for around £1.2bn. The telecoms equipment and services firm was the UK’s largest telecoms manufacturer in the 70s, 80s and 90s but the downturn in 2001 sealed its fate.
2006: UK start-up activity in the analogue, mixed signal and RF area increases ten-fold in the last five years. Four mobile operators pay a total of £22bn to the Government for 3G spectrum licences.
2009: The history of the R&D centre at Ansty Park, Coventry, which then owner Ericsson closed with the loss of 700 jobs, highlights the changes from design and manufacturing to services businesses which have taken place in the UK’s telecoms industry in the last 50 years.