The National Telephone Company (NTC) was a British telephone company from 1881 until 1911 which brought together smaller local companies in the early years of the telephone. Under the Telephone Transfer Act 1911 it was taken over by the General Post Office (GPO) in 1912.
Three years after the first telephone company, The Telephone Company (Bells Patents) Ltd, appeared in London (in fact it was the first in Europe), the National Telephone Company was formed on 10 March 1881, as a provincial subsidiary of the United Telephone Company Limited (UTC). The NTC was initially formed to develop and operate telephone services in Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Ulster and parts of Scotland, taking over UTC operations in those places.
The UTC developed other similar provincial companies throughout the British Isles between 1881 and 1885. The UTC then wished to create a new company for the amalgamation of all their associated companies. However, the government declined to issue the proposed new company with a licence to operate or to allow the transfer of an existing licence. The UTC then decided to use one of its provincial companies as a vehicle for their policy of amalgamation, starting in 1889 with the merger of the UTC with the Lancashire and Cheshire Telephone Company and the NTC. The 'National Telephone Company Limited' name being retained.
In 1899 it commissioned Telephone House in London's Temple Lane. The building still bears the company's NT logo and some cherubs holding what appear to be old style telephone handsets.
The amalgamation policy continued; in 1890 the NTC absorbed the Northern District Telephone Company and the South of England Telephone Company, in 1892 the Western Counties and South Wales Company and the Sheffield Telephone Exchange and Electric Light Company and in 1893 the Telephone Company of Ireland Limited. Throughout this period the NTC also took over smaller telephone companies.
With the policy of amalgamation, the NTC, under the direction of William E L Gaine as general manager and Dane Sinclair as engineer in chief, set about creating a uniform organisation over eight districts; Metropolitan, Southern, Western, Midland, North-Western, Northern, Scotland and Ireland.
Following the Telegraph Acts of 1892 and 1896, NTC trunk lines were acquired and transferred to the Post Office between 1896 and 1897. In 1901, the Postmaster General and the NTC signed an agreement to prevent unnecessary duplication of plant and wasteful competition in London.
In 1905, the Postmaster General and the NTC signed a further agreement for the purchase of the NTC's system on the expiry of its licence on 31 December 1911, an option for the Post Office that formed a part of the original licence agreement of 1881. On 31 December 1911 the NTC ceased to formally trade. The Postmaster General took over the NTC and its telephone systems and the NTC passed into liquidation.
Stamps for The National Telephone Company depicting the head of the company chairman, Colonel Robert Raynsford Jackson. Produced in 1884 by Maclure, Macdonald and Co.
The National Telephone Company also issued stamps in various values to enable the public to pre pay for telephone calls made from company premises.
National Telephone Company Telegraph Pole from 1908National Telephone Company Telegraph Pole Markings from 1908
Historical documents
Records of the National Telephone Company (51 boxes, 8 volumes), c.1880s–c.1946 are held by BT Archives.
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Neil McLeod was a Prince Edward Island lawyer, judge, politician, the fifth premier, and Leader of the Opposition during the amalgamation of the Prince Edward Island legislature. He was born at Uigg on the island to Roderick McLeod and Flora McDonald, Baptist immigrants from the Isle of Skye in Scotland. He was educated at the Uigg Grammar School and in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, articled in law at Charlottetown and was called to the bar in 1873. Four years later, his marriage to the beloved Isabella Jane Adelia Hayden, the Methodist granddaughter to Irish Roman Catholic immigrant and merchant John Roach Bourke, furthered Gaelic intersections among Islander cultural enclaves. McLeod was the child of immigrants from the Isle of Skye and transcriptions identified him as both "Neil McLeod" and "Neil MacLeod", in publications as well as legal documents, after the 1886 election of Angus MacLeod. Historians continue to research his positions on the 1882 replacement of French-language texts with bilingual readers for French Acadians, late nineteenth-century prohibitions on Canadian Gaelic, and corporal punishment in Prince Edward Island schools. During this period, McLeod practiced law with partner Edward Jarvis Hodgson before joining the McLeod, Morson, and McQuarrie law firm. He also served as Commissioner for the Poor House and as a "trustee" to the public Prince Edward Island Hospital for the Insane, which replaced the Lunatic Asylum following a Grand Jury inquest. In 2019, mental health officer and occupational therapist Tina Pranger examined the presents and pasts of the Hillsborough Hospital, providing a summation of previous assessments of the inquest by historians and curators.
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Be Unlimited was an Internet service provider in the United Kingdom between 2004 and 2014. Initially founded as an independent company by Boris Ivanovic and Dana Tobak in 2005, it was bought by Spanish group Telefónica Europe in 2006 before being sold on to BSkyB in March 2013 in an agreement which saw BSkyB buy the fixed telephone line and broadband business of Telefónica Europe which at the time traded under the O2 and BE brands. The deal saw BSkyB agree to pay £180 million initially, followed by a further £20 million after all customers had been transferred to Sky's existing business. The sale was subject to regulatory approval in April 2013, and was subsequently approved by the Office of Fair Trading on 16 May 2013.
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