BT Group plc, trading as BT, is a British multinational telecommunications services company with head offices in London, England, United Kingdom. It has operations in around 170 countries. Its BT Global Services division supplies telecoms services to corporate and government customers worldwide, and its BT Consumer division supplies telephony, broadband, and subscription television services in Great Britain to around 18 million customers.
BT's origins date back to the founding of the Electric Telegraph Co in 1846 which developed a nationwide communications network.
1912, the General Post Office, a government department, became the monopoly telecoms supplier in GB.
The Post Office Act of 1969 led to the GPO becoming a public corporation.
British Telecommunications, trading as British Telecom, was formed in 1980
It became independent of the Post Office in 1981.
1982 Formation of joint venture with Securicor to offer radiophone services[1]
1984 British Telecommunications was privatised, becoming British Telecommunications plc, with some 50 percent of its shares sold to investors.
1988 TAT-8, the first fibre-optic transatlantic cable, was put into use. The project was managed by AT&T, British Telecom and France Telecom. it had a capacity equivalent to 40,000 calls, ten times that of the last copper cable. It covered 6700 km between Widemouth Bay, Cornwall, and Tuckerton, New Jersey. A branching unit about 500 km from Cornwall enabled a connection to France. There were 120 electronic repeaters in watertight housings along the route.
The Government sold its remaining stake in further share sales in 1991 and 1993.
In August 2006 BT acquired online electrical retailer Dabs.com for £30.6 million
2015 Employs 88,500 persons in 60 countries with 70,900 in the UK.[2]
See Also
Sources of Information
- ↑ The Times Dec. 17, 1982
- ↑ 2015 Annual Report p31