Telecommuncations in the United Kingdom have evolved from the early days of the telegraph to modern broadband and mobile phone networks with Internet services.

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.

Until 1982, the main civil telecommunications system in the UK was a state monopoly known (since reorganisation in 1969) as Post Office Telecommunications. Broadcasting of radio and television was a duopoly of the BBC and Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA): these two organisations controlled all broadcast services, and directly owned and operated the broadcast transmitter sites. Mobile phone and Internet services did not then exist. The civil telecoms monopoly ended when Mercury Communications arrived in 1983. The Post Office system evolved into British Telecom and was privatised in 1984. Broadcast transmitters, which belonged to the BBC and IBA, were privatised during the 1990s and now belong to Babcock International and Arqiva.

British Rail Telecommunications was created in 1992 by British Rail (BR). It was the largest private telecoms network in Britain, consisting of 17,000 route kilometres of fibre optic and copper cable which connected every major city and town in the country and provided links to continental Europe through the Channel Tunnel. BR also operated its own national trunked radio network providing dedicated train-to-shore mobile communications, and in the early 1980s BR helped establish Mercury Communications', now C&WC, core infrastructure by laying a resilient 'figure-of-eight' fibre optic network alongside Britain's railway lines, spanning London, Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester.

Answer this series of questions:

1. What was made in 1992?
2. By who?
3. When that happened, how many private telecoms networks in the UK were larger?
4. Did it have over 10,000 kilometers of cables?
5. What types of cable were used?
6. Did it connect all the big cities?
7. Was it connected to the Channel Tunnel?
8. What kind of network did it lay along the railroad tracks in the early '80s?
9. What company did that help to establish?
10. Did it go all the way to Manchester?
11. What communications system was in Britain prior to 1982?
12. Did they have any competition?
13. How many organizations controlled radio and TV?
14. What was one?
15. And the other?
16. What broke up the monopoly?
17. What year did that occur?
18. Who owns the transmitters now?
19. When was NTC around?
20. Who took over then?

Numbered answers:
1. British Rail Telecommunications
2. British Rail
3. None
4. Yes
5. fibre optic and copper
6. Yes
7. Yes
8. a resilient 'figure-of-eight' fibre optic network
9. Mercury Communications
10. Yes
11. Post Office Telecommunications
12. No
13. Two
14. the BBC
15. Independent Broadcasting Authority
16. Mercury Communications
17. 1983.
18. Babcock International and Arqiva
19. 1881 until 1911
20. the General Post Office