British Telecommunications plc

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British Telecommunications plc

BT Centre
81 Newgate Street
London EC1A 7AJ
United Kingdom
(071) 356 5000
Fax: (071) 356 5520

Public Company
Incorporated: 1984
Employees: 220,000
Sales: £12.32 billion (US$23.03 billion)
Stock Exchanges: London New York Toronto Tokyo

British Telecommunications pic, commonly known as BT, was born under the sign of change. In the early 1990s the largest investor-owned company in Europe in terms of sales, it came into being in spring 1984, through the transformation of a former state utility, at a turning point in the development of U.K. and European telecommunications. Like its competitors, it has seen its history largely molded by two factors—rapid technological advance, including the convergence of telecommunications and computing; and, with early moves toward the deregulation of the European Community telecommunications services market, the increasing pressure of national and international market forces.

In its first few years of existence the company had to confront the consequences of two major changes in its United Kingdom environment. The first of these is the ongoing liberalization of the U.K. telecommunications market, a process responsible for the creation of BT. The second factor is the privatization of the company itself. The public utility aspect of communications, earlier institutionalized in the U.K. Post Office, had then to hold its own in double harness, or as some critics maintain, with the interests of shareholders. BT’s main activity is supplying telecommunication services in the U.K. market of 55 million people in accordance with the obligation imposed on the company by its 25-year operating license from the Department of Trade and Industry. As well as providing a vital infrastructural facility, BT plays a significant role in the national economy. It has 95% of the U.K. telecommunications market and is the United Kingdom’s largest private-sector employer, employing 220,000 people in its home country. In the early 1990s it was the largest civilian purchaser of U.K. goods and services. In fiscal year 1990-1991 it spent £4 billion on procurement. Led by its energetic chairman, Iain Vallance, and Mike Bett, deputy chairman, however, BT operates on a global scale. The company’s acquisition and joint venture policy reflects an ambition to lead the world telecommunication services market.

The company’s administrative and technological roots are mingled with those of the U.K. Post Office and reach back into the second half of the 19th century, when inventors at home and abroad, such as Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and Guglielmo Marconi, were applying electromagnetic principles to the development of practicable forms of telecommunications. Out of this the modern telegraph, followed by the telephone, was born. In 1850 the first submarine telegraph cable was laid across the English Channel. In 1878 Bell demonstrated his newly patented telephone to Queen Victoria, and in 1879 England’s first telephone exchange opened in London. It was in the United Kingdom, too, that the first international telephone call was made, in 1891, between England and France. The telegraph and telephone were at first exploited by private enterprises, but they were gradually taken over by a U.K. government department, the General Post Office. The reversal of that nationalization process is nearly complete.

In 1869 the Postmaster General was granted the exclusive right to transmit telegrams within the United Kingdom. At first the telephone was slow to catch on and was not regarded by the Post Office as a serious threat to its telegraphic network. The first independent U.K. telephone service provider, Telephone Company Ltd., was set up in 1879 and in 1880 merged with its competitor, Edison Telephone Company, to form United Telephone Company. Seeing that the telephone was beginning to take customers away from its telegraph service, the Post Office embarked on a series of protective measures, and in 1880 the government brought an action against the recently formed United Telephone Company, claiming that it was operating in contravention of the Telegraph Act of 1869. The High Court subsequently decided that the telephone was a form of telegraph. The merger was revoked, and telephone companies were required to be licensed by the telegraph monopoly holder, the Post Office.

The next stage in the process of squeezing out competition and establishing a state telephone monopoly was the building up of the Post Office’s own system. In 1896 the Post Office completed its improved telephone network by taking over the trunk lines of National Telephone Company, the largest of its licensees, and started to set up its own local telephone exchanges. It was then decided that more national licenses would be granted. National Telephone Company continued to operate a local service until its license expired in 1911, but in 1912 the Post Office was granted a monopoly on the supply of telephone services throughout the United Kingdom. It took over all of National Telephone Company’s exchanges and opened an automatic exchange in Epsom, south of London.

Since 1899 several of the larger towns and cities, including Glasgow, Brighton, Swansea, Portsmouth, and Kingston upon Hull (Hull), had each been operating an independent local telephone service, but their number gradually dwindled as they were bought out by National Telephone Company or the Post Office. In 1913 only Hull was left. By cooperating with successive competitors—National Telephone Company, the Post Office, and it has survived, first as the Hull Corporation Telephone Department, a municipal enterprise run by the Hull City Council, and since 1987, as a limited company, Kingston Communications (Hull) PLC, wholly owned by Hull City Council. It is a licensed public telecommunications operator, with interconnection agreements with BT and BT’s competitor, Mercury Telecommunications Limited.

A landmark in the prehistory of BT was the Post Office Act of 1969, which changed the status of the Post Office. This former government department became a state public corporation under the Secretary of State for Industry. The telecommunications services remained in the Post Office but were divided from the postal services into Post Office Telecommunications.

Three further events marked the telephone industry’s move toward an environment of free competition. First came the passage of the 1981 British Telecommunications Act, which took Post Office Telecommunications out of the Post Office, turning it into an autonomous, though still state-owned, body known as British Telecommunications Corporation or, more familiarily, British Telecom. Second was the 1984 Telecommunications Act, by which BT was privatized, the telecommunications market was further liberalized, and a regulatory body was set up. Third, the Duopoly Review in 1990 resulted in the government’s 1991 decision to further increase telecommunications competition. The government also decided to sell off its remaining shares in BT, although this decision was not influenced by the Duopoly Review.

In July 1981 the British Telecommunications Act that separated telecommunications from the Post Office and set up a new state public corporation to supply them also gave the government powers to license competitors in the operation of the domestic telephone network. As well as modifying the state company’s statutory monopoly of the telephone network, this act took away its monopoly in the provision of telecommunication equipment, leaving it only with the right to supply and install a subscriber’s first telephone. The act not only opened the market to competition in value-added services, such as data processing and storage, but allowed other providers to use BT’s lines.

In October 1981 Mercury Communications Limited (Mercury) was chosen to receive a 25-year renewable license to operate a national and international digital network—a system that encodes information as a series of on-off signals—to compete with BT’s trunk traffic. Mercury had been set up early in 1981 by British Petroleum, Barclay’s Merchant Bank, and Cable and Wireless pic to enter the business of long-distance communications, offering a customized service to companies. The license allowed it to interconnect with the BT network and to enter the European and U.S. sectors. In 1983 the government undertook for seven years not to license any company but BT and Mercury to carry telecommunication services over fixed links. Under this duopoly policy, Mercury, which began operating in 1986, was to be BT’s single serious network competitor until at least 1990. Mercury’s market share in the early 1990s was variously estimated between 3.7% and 5%, but was increasing markedly. An efficiency and investment effort was BT management’s response to this new competition and to growing demands and service expectations from its customers. Waiting times for connections and repairs were reduced, and new digital equipment was introduced into the network, including exchanges that use microchip technology to integrate the switching and transmission elements of the network, resulting in a higher quality of service and improved voice transmission. In addition, new products, such as microwave radio transmission in the City of London, were offered. Less than a year after the 1981 Act, the government announced its intention of privatizing the British Telecommunications Corporation.

At the end of 1982 the first telecommunications bill had reached the committee stage, when the general election of May 1983 was called. The bill immediately died, but was presented again in the new Parliament and finally became law in its second form, the Telecommunications Act of April 12, 1984. It had undergone 320 hours of debate and discussion, during which BT itself had briefed members of Parliament on its views and interests. By the act, BT lost its exclusive right to run telecommunications systems, and all PTOs had to be licensed. The new company was to be sold as an integrated organization. Fragmentation, following the breakup of American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) in the United States, would leave the resultant entities too small to defend the home market from foreign competition, to stand up to multinationals in the world markets, and to command the technology and the financial strength for adequate research and development. The possibility of a breakup is still sometimes held over BT’s head when conflict arises with the government. In November 1984, 3.01 billion ordinary shares of 25 pence were offered for sale at 130 pence per share, the first figure being the nominal or face value of the share, and the second its sale price, or market value, at the time of sale. The government retained a 48.6% stake in the new company, valued at the time of sale at £7.8 billion. All the offered shares were bought.

BT’s performance and development have been conditioned since the 1984 act by an official regulatory body, the semi-independent Office of Telecommunications (Oftel), set up in August 1984 under the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and headed by the Director General of Telecommunications, Sir Bryan Carsberg. A major role of this body has been, by simulating the effects of real competition, to prevent BT from abusing its inherited dominance of the U.K. telecommunications market during the process of deregulation. However, the fairness of the competition is often disputed by interested parties. In its severely regulated environment, BT has lost the security of being a state monopoly, without gaining the freedom of action of a wholly autonomous business. Oftel monitors BT’s pricing, accounting, investment policies, and quality of services; issues licenses to further competitors; and continues to facilitate the interconnection of rival services to the BT network. Competitors, for their part, tend to feel that it is BT that is favored by the regulator. The new British Telecommunications pic created by the 1984 act then shared its monopoly in telecommunication systems with Mercury as well as Kingston Communications (Hull) PLC, plus some general licensees. For all intents and purposes, U.K. telecommunications were to be supplied by the BT and Mercury duopoly until 1991.

When BT became a separate state corporation in 1981, before its rebirth in 1984 as a privatized company, it inherited from its Post Office days an evolved network. This network had to be brought up to date at the same time BT was taking on competition from operators starting from scratch. These competitors were using the latest technology, without public service obligations and were able, for example, to go straight to digital systems and cheaper and more efficient optic fiber cable, while BT still had copper wire circuits to be amortized. BT’s technology, however, is in the forefront, and the company spends 2% of its turnover on research and development to keep it there. The domestic telephone services sector is by far BT’s largest operating division in terms of assets, revenue, and number of employees. In 1990 it accounted for nearly 75% of turnover. Its core business is the public switched telephone network (PSTN). The 20-millionth U.K. telephone was installed in 1975, the system became fully automatic in 1976, and in the early 1990s BT, with more than 25 million lines, operated the world’s sixth-largest telephone network, with nearly 100,000 public payphones. In 1990 BTUK—the product of the 1987 merger of BT’s local communications services and national networks divisions—was operating more than 7,000 local exchange units, of which nearly half were already digital. All trunk exchange units have been digital since June 1990. By 1986 there were 65,000 PABX’s—private automatic branch exchanges, or private switchboards. The aim is a fully digital network by the year 2000. There are nearly a million kilometers of optic fiber in the network. However, even at more than 90% telephone penetration in the United Kingdom, BT and its competitors have some way to go before they catch up with France and the United States, which have already close to 100% telephone penetration. BT also sells, installs, and maintains a wide range of telecommunications equipment and products, from handsets to branch exchanges. British Telecom’s profitable and expanding Worldwide Networks Division has a work force of 38,000 and offices in about 20 countries and on every continent, providing services, products, and expertise. Among its overseas activities are subsidiaries in the United States, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, and Japan. In 1991 BT was preparing for the single European market that will exist after 1992 and was looking for opportunities in the newly opened East European markets, where it already provides expertise to several telecommunications companies.

Since 1981 BT has faced the most competition from Mercury for the U.K. business customer, and since 1984, from new providers. The capricious mobile communications market constitutes one of the most disputed areas. BT’s Mobile Telephone System 4, a noncellular service introduced in 1981, with 7,000 subscribers at the beginning of 1990, had capacity problems at peak periods and was being replaced by a cellular network, Cellnet, shared by BT—60%—and Securicor Communications. Its rival, using another network, is Racal -Vodafone. In February 1989 BT bought, for £907 million, a 20% interest in its most important associated company, Mc-Caw Cellular Communications, Inc., a U.S. mobile cellular telephone and broadcasting systems provider and operator.

In data communications, BT is striving to bring the U.K. market up to a volume comparable with that in other European countries and, like Mercury, is installing advanced networks for this purpose. BT offers a wide range of switched—telephone services that pass through an exchange—and nonswit-ched data transmission facilities. Its public data network provides nationwide data transmission; Datei provides higher-speed transmission; and International Datei offers transmission to 65 countries. The U.K. telex market has, like those of other West European providers, largely given way to fax, which BT supplies through a national and international bureau service, Bureaufax. BT, however, still provides an inland telex service as well as an international one to more than 170 countries. Prestei, BT’s public, computer-based information and communications service, launched in 1979, was the first in the world to be fully operational and is by far the largest in the United Kingdom. By 1990 there were more than 95,000 terminals installed, 45% of them for financial institutions, travel agents, hotels, and other business users. While still a state monopoly, BT had introduced a videoconferencing service in 1972. It now has videoconferencing—two-way sound and vision—links with the United States and Canada, as well as with France, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

BT offers a wide range of VANS—value-added network services, including such electronic mailbox services as Telecom Gold and Message Handling Service—in the U.K. VANS market, of which Mercury as yet enjoys only a small share. In November 1989, in order to further its strategies in the home and international VANS market, BT bought, for £231 million, the U.S. company Tymnet, one of the largest VANS companies in the world, and consolidated some of its own international services under a new company, BT Tymnet Inc. BT started setting up an ISDN—integrated services digital network—that could eventually replace the other networks by offering all data, voice, text, and image network services at high speed, with circuit-switched digital connections from a single access point. However, although ISDN is of primary importance in BT’s plans for the future, the need to await definition of international standards and to raise the consciousness of potential customers, obliges the company, like others, to advance slowly in this area. A pilot service was launched by BT in June 1985 that by the end of 1989 was available to 75% of business users. In 1989 BT changed its ISDN to international CCITT—Commitée Consultatif International Télégraphe et Téléphone—standards. To assess its best uses, in the spring and summer of 1990, BT put its ISDN into a market development phase with customers and suppliers. Some of the technical drawbacks inherent in ISDN were targeted by the development of integrated broadband communications.

BT is an active participant in three satellite consortia— Eutelsat, European Telecommunications Satellite Organisation; Inmarsat, International Maritime Satellite Organisation; and Intelsat, International Telecommunications Satellite Organisation. A familiar landmark in the West End of London, the Telecom Tower, formerly the Post Office Tower, is the heart of BT’s microwave transmission circuit. This is a high frequency radio link for transmission over line-of-sight routes. It provides broadcasting links with BT earth stations, allowing international transfer of television and radio material. BT also has 140,000 kilometers of sound circuits and 39,000 kilometers of vision circuits between studios and transmitters in the U.K.

In the early 1990s there were major changes. The duopoly policy was reviewed in 1990, and a report issued in January 1991 was followed two months later by a government recommendation that both BT and Mercury should face greater competition in both local, trunk, and international services. BT is still barred from offering entertainment services on cable TV, but after some hard bargaining, Sir Bryan Carsberg, director of telecommunications; Peter Lilley, secretary of state for trade and industry; and Iain Vallance, BT’s chairman, agreed on amendments to BT’s 25-year license. BT was then allowed to proceed with further rebalancing between telephone rentals and call charges and with customized tariffs. It was announced that the sale of a slice of the government’s residual share in BT would take place in November 1991.

BT’s preliminary results for the year ending March 31, 1991, showed a 14.2% increase in pretax profits and a 6.8% increase in turnover. The dividend per ordinary share at the time of the sale announcement was up from 10.5 pence in the previous year to 11.8 pence. In August 1991, in spite of poor growth in demand for services and the announcement of a 5% average increase in telephone charges, Iain Vallance declared an 11.3% rise in pretax profits, to £825 million, for the first quarter of the year. It appeared to many as if BT was being fattened up for market. BT had been engaged in a rationalizing and restructuring operation. In the year ending March 31, 1990, a slimming-down and cost-control operation had begun, covered by an exceptional charge of £390 million. In the following year, 18,800 jobs were shed and overtime work was cut, while another 10,000 terminations were planned for the year 1991 to 1992. In April 1991 the reshaped company announced that the former three operating divisions, BTUK, comprising Local Communications Services and National Networks; BTI, British Telecom International; and CSD, Communication Services Division, would be replaced. There are now two major divisions that deal directly with customers: Personal Communications and Business Communications, both supported by a Products and Services Division. BT’s international and U.K. networks have been brought together into a new Worldwide Networks Division, and some business activities best managed separately, such as mobile communications and operator services, now comprise a Special Business Division.

Other European countries as well as Britain have opened to competition telecommunications equipment supply and some advanced services, but the United Kingdom is the only nation to have freed the provision of basic network infrastructure, such as the telephone services. In 1991 BT held the major portion of residential telephone connections, although Mercury had mounted a large publicity campaign to wrest customers away from BT. New competition could come from British utilities, such as British Rail, which had their own telephone networks already in place, but also from foreign private telecommunications operators or computer firms and from mobile and satellite network operators. Mercury is likely to protect itself against the giant BT by alliances with some of these newcomers.

Early in 1991 BT’s intensified drive to consolidate its image as a smart, market-oriented world organization with a human face was signaled by its integration of the current BT acronym into a new blue and red logo, representing a dancing piper apparently delivering a sound message. A new designer image was commissioned for the group and was widely publicized; public telephones were replaced by newly designed models; and the bright yellow of BT vehicles began to be replaced, in a notoriously expensive replace-or-respray operation, by a stylish grey. Even if the future holds difficulties for BT in the form of growing competition, the possibility of a Labor government with a stern regulatory approach to privatized utilities, and the conjectured slowdown in a European market saturated with business services, BT patently has the muscle and the will to contend with such challenges. Technological resources multiply with magic speed, political and economic change is everywhere, and new paths are being cleared. BT, like the enthusiastic figure in its logo, is bounding forward.

Principal Subsidiaries

BT Property Ltd; BT (Marine) Limited; BT North America Inc. (USA); BT Repair Services Ltd; BT (Worldwide) Limited; British Telecom (CBP) Limited; International Aeradio pic; Manx Telecom Limited; Mitel Corporation (51%, Canada); Sharelink Limited (65%); Telecom Securicor Cellular Radio Limited (60%); Telecom Security Limited (90%); Yellow Page Sales Limited; BT & D Technologies Limited (40%); Belize Telecommunications Limited (25%); Gibraltar Telecommunications International Limited (50%); McCaw Cellular Communications, Inc. (20%); Marshalls Finance Limited (30% Ordinary, 94% Preference); Phonepoint Limited (45%).