BBG Communications : Communications in the UK

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Until 1982, the main civil telecommunications system in the United Kingdom was a state owned monopoly known as POT. Broadcasting of radio and television was the province of two - BBC and Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA).The BBC and IBA controlled all broadcast services and directly owned and operated the broadcast transmitter locations. However, when discussing telecommunications systems, they did not yet include Internet services or mobile phone services.

But the civil telecoms monopoly halted with the entry of Mercury Communications in 1983. The Post Office system evolved into British Telecom and was privatised in 1984. The broadcast transmitters, which belonged to the BBC and IBA before underwent privatization in the 1990s. They are currently owned by National Grid Wireless, VT Communications and Arqiva. Communications policies and regulations have gone through various modifications during the same period, and most of the bodies have been merged into Ofcom. Ofcom is the independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries.

Submarine Communications

The UK is a focal point for many of the world’s submarine communications cables, which are mostly digital optical fiber cables.Many satellite links remain operational, but these provide a smaller part of the international bandwidth. Most commercial broadcasting companies lease transmission facilities from 1 or more of the transmission organisations. But smaller local radio stations are generally self-providing for cost-efficiency reasons.

BT remains as the provider of fixed telephones lines, both POTS and ISDN, and it has a universal service obligation.Next to it is Virgin Media, the 2nd biggest company in the residential phone line space. While other companies provide fixed-phone lines too, their primary market is mostly large companies in the major cities.

There are plenty of other providers who sell fixed phone services that are carried over BT lines but they generally have no network infrastructure of their own.

Third Generation Licences in the UK

The 3rd generation system is a product of technological improvements, essentially an improvement of the available bandwidth. This makes it possible for new service offerings to telecommunications subscribers. Such services include streaming of live radio or video, video calls and live TV. The 4 2G companies participated in a competitive auction and were granted 3G licences, as did a new competitor known as 3. As mentioned in BBG Communications letter, the four 3G providers have already rolled out their networks.

The telecommunications provider 3 has the largest 3G coverage as they were the first to introduce their network coverage in March 2003. But Vodafone and Orange rival 3 in terms of its reach.T-Mobile and o2 have good coverage but both generally get concentrated in major cities and less so in rural towns.However, T-Mobile and 3 entered into a deal whereby they can use each others 3G coverage. But in this deal, 3’s 3G customers don’t have access to T-Mobile 2G coverage. An additional agreement has also been struck by 3 with Orange until 2010, under the terms that Orange’s 2G coverage is available to 3 subscribers where no 3G signal exists. This agreement is deemed to become less important as 3 and T-Mobile introduce their shared 3G networks. Subscribers of 3 to have the best coverage of any United Kingdom network.

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