Major historical collections
The earliest records held by BT Archives are those of the Electric Telegraph Company from 1846. Other private telegraph companies whose records are held are the British Electric Telegraph Company, International Telegraph Company, Submarine Telegraph Company, Electric and International Telegraph Company, British and Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company, London District Telegraph Company, United Kingdom Electric Telegraph Company, Universal Private Telegraph Company, Eastern Telegraph Company, British Telegraph Company, Irish Submarine Telegraph Company, English and Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company and the Anglo-American Telegraph Company. BT Archives also holds documents relating to the UK telegraph service of the British Post Office; the private companies being brought under the control of the Post Office in 1870.
BT Archives also holds records of the private telephone companies and of the Post Office telephone services. The private telephone companies represented are the Telephone Company Limited (Bell's Patents), Edison Telephone Company of London Limited, United Telephone Company, Lancashire and Cheshire Telephonic Exchange Company Limited, Northern District Telephone Company, National Telephone Company, Western Counties and South Wales Telephone Company, Corporation of Glasgow Telephone Department and London and Globe Telephone Maintenance Company.
Post Office Telecommunications activities continue concurrently and subsequently to the private telegraph and telephone companies. These are documented in the records of the Post Office telegraph and telephone service 1864-1969 and the Post Office Corporation (Telecommunications division) 1969-1981.
From 1 October 1981, British Telecommunications, trading as British Telecom, severed its links with the Post Office and became a totally separate public corporation. Records of British Telecommunications (public corporation) are held from 1981 until privatisation in 1984. Records after privatisation, of British Telecommunications plc 1984-2001, and of BT Group plc from 2001, continue to be preserved and made available for researchers in line with BT's heritage policy.
The British Phone Book collection is a major resource for genealogy and family history, containing a near-complete set of United Kingdom telephone directories from the first one issued in 1880. For preservation reasons the phone books are generally accessed on microfilm, and the phone books 1880-1984 are digitised and have been made available online.
BT Archives cares for more than 500,000 images and 1,000 film titles. Selected images can be found on BT Archives online image gallery.
BT Group plc is a British multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-line, broadband and mobile services in the UK, and also provides subscription television and IT services.
The Isle of Man has an extensive communications infrastructure consisting of telephone cables, submarine cables, and an array of television and mobile phone transmitters and towers.
Telecommunications in the United Kingdom have evolved from the early days of the telegraph to modern broadband and mobile phone networks with Internet services.
The liberalisation of Bangladesh's telecommunications sector began with small steps in 1989 with the issuance of a licence to a private operator for the provision of inter alia cellular mobile services to compete with Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB), the previous monopoly provider of telecommunications services within Bangladesh. Significant changes in the number of fixed and mobile services deployed in Bangladesh occurred in the late 1990s and the number of services in operation have subsequently grown exponentially in the past five years.
The General Electric Company, or GEC, was a major British industrial conglomerate involved in consumer and defence electronics, communications, and engineering. The company was founded in 1886, was Britain's largest private employer with over 250,000 employees in the 1980s, and at its peak in the 1990s, made profits of over £1 billion a year.
The red telephone box, a telephone kiosk for a public telephone designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, is a familiar sight on the streets of the United Kingdom, Malta, Bermuda and Gibraltar.
Deutsche Telekom AG is a German telecommunications company headquartered in Bonn and by revenue the largest telecommunications provider in Europe. Deutsche Telekom was formed in 1995, as the former state-owned monopoly Deutsche Bundespost was privatised. Since it was privatized, Deutsche Telekom has featured among Fortune 500 companies with its latest ranking 86 in 2020. The company operates several subsidiaries worldwide, including the mobile communications brand T-Mobile.
Bell Canada is a Canadian telecommunications company headquartered at 1 Carrefour Alexander-Graham-Bell in the borough of Verdun in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is an ILEC in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec; as such, it was a founding member of the Stentor Alliance. It is also a CLEC for enterprise customers in the western provinces.
Mercury Communications was a national telephone company in the United Kingdom, formed in 1981 as a subsidiary of Cable & Wireless, to challenge the then-monopoly of British Telecom (BT). Although it proved only moderately successful at challenging BT's dominance, it led the way for new communication companies to attempt the same.
A postal, telegraph, and telephone service is a government agency responsible for postal mail, telegraph, and telephone services. Such monopolies existed in many countries, though not in North America or Japan. Many PTTs have been partially or completely privatised in recent years. In some of these privatisations, the PTT was renamed completely, whereas in others, the name of the privatised corporation has been only slightly modified, such as PT Telkom in Indonesia, Deutsche Telekom in Germany, Kosovo Telecom in Kosovo and Post Luxembourg in Luxembourg.
Standard Telephones and Cables Ltd was a British manufacturer of telephone, telegraph, radio, telecommunications, and related equipment. During its history, STC invented and developed several groundbreaking new technologies including pulse-code modulation (PCM) and optical fibres.
Post Office Telecommunications was set up as a separate department of the UK Post Office, in October 1969. The Post Office Act 1969 was passed to provide for greater efficiency in post and telephone services; rather than run a range of services, each organisation would be able to focus on their respective service, with dedicated management. By law, the Post Office had the exclusive right to operate the UK national telecom network, and limited ability to license other providers' services and equipment. The National Telephone Company controlled most of telephony in Britain before the 1880 ruling on the Telegraph Act 1869 mandated a nationalised service – which was instated in 1911. The 1869 Telegraph Act granted this monopoly over communications and it was confirmed in 1880 that this Act included telephony even though the telephone had not been invented when the Act was first conceived. Post Office engineers in the inter-war period had considerable expertise in both telecommunications and hearing assistive devices.
Manx Telecom Ltd. is the primary provider of broadband and telecommunications on the Isle of Man. It is owned by Basalt Infrastructure Partners LLP.
Tanzania Telecommunications Corporation, formerly Tanzania Telecommunications Company Limited (TTCL), is the oldest and largest fixed line telecommunications company in Tanzania. The company comes forth from the former Tanzania Posts and Telecommunications Corporation in 1993. TTCL was wholly owned by the Government of Tanzania until the partial privatisation of the company on 23 February 2001.
The General Post Office (GPO) was the state postal system and telecommunications carrier of the United Kingdom until 1969. Before the Acts of Union 1707, it was the postal system of the Kingdom of England, established by Charles II in 1660. Similar General Post Offices were established across the British Empire. In 1969 the GPO was abolished and the assets transferred to The Post Office, changing it from a Department of State to a statutory corporation. In 1980, the telecommunications and postal sides were split prior to British Telecommunications' conversion into a totally separate publicly owned corporation the following year as a result of the British Telecommunications Act 1981. For the more recent history of the postal system in the United Kingdom, see the articles Royal Mail and Post Office Ltd.
Cable & Wireless Communications Ltd operating as C&W Communications is a telecommunications company which has operations in the Caribbean and Central America. It is owned by Liberty Latin American and is headquartered in Denver, Colorado.
Gibtelecom is the largest telecommunications provider in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar. Its headquarters is located on John Mackintosh Square.
The KX series of telephone boxes in the United Kingdom was introduced by BT in 1985. Following the privatisation of BT in 1984, the company decided to create a newly designed and improved take on the British telephone box, which at this point consisted of only red telephone boxes which BT had recently acquired, the most common being the iconic K6 box. These red boxes were considered flawed in parts by BT for several reasons, including cost, lack of ventilation, accessibility and maintenance. BT announced the £160 million series of new boxes, the KX series designed by GKN, as well as announcing the eventual replacement of all existing telephone boxes. The main telephone box in the KX range is the KX100. Upon launch, there were five models in total. The boxes were produced at a rate of 5,000 a year, with the total count of all BT-owned kiosks reaching 137,000 by 1999, a number which has since decreased by more than seventy per cent.
