BT Group

BT Group plc (commonly known as 'British Telecom' or just BT) is the privatised former British state telecommunications operator. It is still the dominant telecommunications provider in the United Kingdom.

History of BT

Early History

A number of privately owned telegraph companies operated in Britain from 1846 onwards. Among them were

The Telegraph Act of 1868 passed the control of all these to the newly formed GPO (General Post Office)'s "Postal Telegraphs Department"

With the invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876 the GPO begun to provide telephone services from some of its telegraph exchanges. However in 1882 the Postmaster-General, Henry Fawcett started to issue licences to operate a telephone service to private businesses and the telephone system grew under the GPO in some areas and private ownership in others. The GPO's main competitor the National Telephone Company emerged in this market by absorbing other private telephone companies, prior to its absoption into the GPO in 1912.

The trunk network was unified under GPO control in 1896 and the local distribution network in 1912. A few municipally owned services remained outside of GPO control. These were Kingston upon Hull, Portsmouth and Guernsey.

Later History

1969 the GPO, a government department, becomes the Post Office, a nationalised industry separate from government. Post Office Telecommunications is one of the divisions.
1980 Post Office Telecommunications is renamed British Telecom as prelude to privatisation.
1st July 1984 British Telecom is privatised as British Telecommunications plc, trading as British Telecom
31st March 1991 The trading name is changed from British Telecom to BT.
April 2000 BT announces its intention split into a group companies, under a new holding company name BT Group plc

BT as it is today

BT owns and runs the telephone exchanges , trunk network and local loop connections for the vast majority of British fixed-line telephones.

It is officially designated the dominant operator in British telecommunications market. BT's businesses are operated under special government regulation by the British telecoms regulator Ofcom (formerly known as Oftel).

Oftel's strategy for telecoms deregulation in the UK through the 1990s was to drive down BT’s market share. It aimed to achieve this by restrictions on the size of its price increases and by forcing it to allow other telcos to gain access to the connection between the exchange and the customers premises.

This has been successful in the area of telephony resale through Independent Service Providers but has left BT as the dominant operator in ADSL connections and local loop provision.

BT Group has been organised into five business divisions

BT Global Services: Business services and solutions (formerly BT Ignite)
BT Openworld:BT Internet provider
BT Retail: Retail telecoms
BT Wholesale: Wholesale telecoms network
BT Exact: Research and Development, and consultancy

The former mobile telecommunications business of BT ("BT Cellnet") has now been demerged into a separate business named "mmO₂". This was a move designed to remove the burden of debt with which the company had encumbered itself, much of which was acquired during the bidding round for the 3rd generation mobile telephony (commonly known as 3G) licenses.

BT's "Web patent"

BT owns a controversial patent, (US patent number 4873662), which it claimed gives it a patent rights on the technology of the hyperlink on the World Wide Web. Whilst the UK patent has long since expired, the US patent is not due to expire until 2006. Opponents of BT's claims hold that the patent is not valid, due to prior art by both Douglas Englebart and Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu. On February 11, 2002, a court case relating to BT's claims started in a US federal court against Prodigy Communications Corporation. A U.S. court ruled on August 22, 2002 that the BT patent is not applicable to Web technology, and granted Prodigy's request for summary judgment.

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