The Office of Telecommunications (Oftel) (the telecommunications regulator) was a department in the United Kingdom government, under civil service control, charged with promoting competition and maintaining the interests of consumers in the UK telecommunications market. It was set up under the Telecommunications Act 1984 after privatisation of the nationalised operator BT.
Oftel was accused by critics such as Freeserve of having been "captured" by BT, and of giving the dominant operator too much freedom to leverage its monopoly status in fixed line telephony into other markets such as ADSL.[1]
On 29 December 2003, the duties of Oftel were inherited by Ofcom, which was the result of the consolidation of five separate British telecommunications, radio spectrum and broadcasting regulators.
Director-General of Oftel
Bryan Carsberg 1 August 1984 – 12 June 1992
Bill Wigglesworth (acting) 13 June 1992 – 31 March 1998
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.
Local loop unbundling is the regulatory process of allowing multiple telecommunications operators to use connections from the telephone exchange to the customer's premises. The physical wire connection between the local exchange and the customer is known as a "local loop", and is owned by the incumbent local exchange carrier. To increase competition, other providers are granted unbundled access.
Modern telecommunications in Thailand began in 1875 with the deployment of the first telegraph service. Historically, the development of telecommunication networks in Thailand were in the hands of the public sector. Government organisations were established to provide telegraph, telephone, radio, and television services, and other government agencies, especially the military, still control a large estate of radio and television spectra. Private telecommunication operators initially acquired concession agreements with state enterprises. For mobile phone services, all the concessions have been amended by successive government to last 25 years have gradually ended in 2015. For other services, the concession terms and conditions vary, ranging from one to fifteen years. Nearly all of the concessions are build-operate-transfer (BTO) contracts. The private investor has to build all the required facilities and transfer them to the state before they can operate or offer services to public.
Telecommunications in the United Kingdom have evolved from the early days of the telegraph to modern broadband and mobile phone networks with Internet services.
Orange S.A., formerly France Télécom S.A. is a French multinational telecommunications corporation. It has 266 million customers worldwide and employs 89,000 people in France, and 59,000 elsewhere. In 2015, the group had revenue of €40 billion. The company's head office is located in the 15th arrondissement of Paris.
In the United Kingdom, Packet Switch Stream (PSS) was an X.25-based packet-switched network, provided by the British Post Office Telecommunications and then British Telecommunications starting in 1980. After a period of pre-operational testing with customers the service was launched as a commercial service on 20 August 1981. The experimental predecessor network (EPSS) formally closed down on 31 July 1981 after all the existing connections had been moved to PSS.
The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom.
O2 (typeset as O2) is a global brand name owned by the Spanish telecommunications company Telefónica. The company uses the O2 brand for its subsidiaries in the United Kingdom and Germany. Since 2018, it is also used as an online-only flanker brand in Spain.
Freeserve was a British Internet service provider, which was founded in 1998. At its height, the company became a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index, before merging into the Wanadoo group in 2000. It then became a subsidiary of France Telecom, who owned a controlling interest in Wanadoo. Wanadoo rebranded over time and eventually became Orange Home UK.
Telephone numbers in the United Kingdom are administered by the Office of Communications (Ofcom). For this purpose, Ofcom established a telephone numbering plan, known as the National Telephone Numbering Plan, which is the system for assigning telephone numbers to subscriber stations.
A mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) is a wireless communications services provider that does not own the wireless network infrastructure over which it provides services to its customers. An MVNO enters into a business agreement with a mobile network operator to obtain bulk access to network services at wholesale rates, then sets retail prices independently. An MVNO may use its own customer service, billing support systems, marketing, and sales personnel, or it could employ the services of a mobile virtual network enabler (MVNE).
Openreach Limited is a company wholly owned by BT Group plc, that maintains the telephone cables, ducts, cabinets and exchanges that connect nearly all homes and businesses in the United Kingdom to the national broadband and telephone network. It was established in 2006 following an agreement between BT and the UK's telecoms regulator, Ofcom, to implement certain undertakings, pursuant to the Enterprise Act 2002, to ensure that rival telecom operators have equality of access to BT's local network.
David Anthony Currie, Baron Currie of Marylebone is a British economist specialising in regulation, and a cross-bench member of the House of Lords. Currie was the inaugural Chairman of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).
Personal numbering is the name for the virtual telephone number service in the UK. Typically the national destination code used for this service is (0)70. The service provides a flexible virtual telephone number able to be routed to any other number, including international mobiles. For example, the UK number +44 70 0585 0070 might route to an Inmarsat satellite phone number, allowing the user to have a UK number while roaming globally.
The Campaign for Unmetered Telecommunications (CUT) was a United Kingdom political pressure group that operated between 1998 and 2001. CUT campaigned for a fairer choice of telecommunications tariffs for consumers—in particular, unmetered local telephone calls that the organisation said would allow the "full potential" of the Internet to be realised. CUT pressured telecommunications operators, regulatory bodies and Government. The campaign was cited as "a major driving force" behind the introduction of unmetered Internet access in the United Kingdom.
O₂ UK is a British telecommunications services provider, headquartered in Slough, England which operates under the O2 brand. It is owned by VMED O2 UK Limited, a 50:50 joint venture between Telefónica and Liberty Global. O2 is the UK's largest mobile network operator, with 31.3 million subscribers as of September 2021.
Telephone numbers in the United Kingdom have a flexible structure that reflects their historical demands, starting from many independent companies through a nationalised near-monopoly, to a system that supports many different services, including cellular phones, which were not envisaged when the system was first built. Numbers evolved in a piecemeal fashion, with numbers initially allocated on an exchange-by-exchange basis for calls connected by manual operators. Subscriber numbers reflected demand in each area, with single digit telephone numbers in very rural areas and longer numbers in cities.
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