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UK: Telecommunication Infrastucture
Overview of the British Telecommunications Infrastructure:
The UK has one of the most advanced telecommunications
infrastructure. They have been quick to embrace fiber optic cable as one
of it’s trunks to carry overseas calls. It has also doubled its use of
WANs in the last three years. The UK has started to use DSL to meet their
Internet access connections.
Basic Statistics Covering British Telecommunication Infrastructure:
The United Kingdom (UK) had a population of about 59,247,000 in 1999. The UK is about 244,000 km2 in size. It had a GNP of 1269.7 billion Euros and a growth in National Product per captia of 21, 498.2 Euros in 1999. So it is no surprise that the UK has a well-established telecommunication system.[1]
The total Telecom market size in the UK for the year ending in March 2000 was 47,800 million Euros. In 1999, the UK had 30,938,000 conventional phone lines.[2] It had approximately 55 telephone lines per 1000 inhabitants in 1997. In 1995 it had about 29 million main telephone lines in use. There are 5.9 public telephones per 1000 inhabitants in 1997. [3] It has no waiting time for service and demand satisfaction is 100%.
In its domestic telecommunications area it has a mix of buried cables, microwave radio relays, and fiber optic systems. For it’s international telecommunications infrastructure the UK has 40 coaxial submarine cables. Many of these cables are fiber optic and there is a race by many British and foreign telecom firms to build fiber optic networks across the Atlantic. According to BT 90%of their long distance phones calls now go over fiber optic lines.[4] For it satellite communications there are 10 Intersat earth stations, 1 Inmarstat, and 1 Eurtesat earth station. There are at least 8 international switching centers.[5]
Since deregulation is the 1980s, there has been growth in two areas of telecommunications in the UK. One is that cable companies were allowed to build their telephone infrastructure so they were able to carry telephony as well as Internet services. This has lead to the spread of Fiber optical cable in the UK. It is estimated that 4.5 million homes have been passed by fiber optic cable. Twenty-one percent of the nearly one million cable TV subscribers have access to fiber optic cable services.[6]
The other area of telephony that has grown since deregulation is mobile phones. In 1996 there were 7.1 million subscribers but which has expanded to 24 million subscribers in 1999.[7] Therefore is approximately 41% of the population has a cell phone. The UK is 17th in ITU’s top 20 economies ranked by mobile cellular penetration in 1999. Finland was the highest ranked economy with 67% while France was ranked 20th with a percentage if 36%. The average was 46% cellular phone penetration in 1999. [8] This growth has led to farce competition which provides a lot of valued added services for mobile phone users. The UK has third generation cellular systems. These consist of Tacs-900, GSM, and DCS-1800 networks.
The domestic mobile telecom companies in the UK:
Vodafone
Cellnet
Orange
One2One
Business Telephony:
The next area of growth in the telecommunications area is business purchases of LAN/WAN equipment. In 1996, LAN/WAN network purchases were $1.6 billion. In 1997, 25% of business in the UK had a WAN network. In 2000, 52% of UK businesses had a WAN.[9] The UK has 260,000 ISDN lines in use. This is being slowly replaced with ADSL lines, which is increasing in use in the UK. In 1999, 40% of high speed broadband ISPS were through DSL lines.[10] In 2000, 16% of the businesses got their Internet access through phone lines, 16% from ISDN lines and 48% from DSL.[11]
Telecommunication Services Companies Operating in the UK:
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ABS Telecom
ACC - UK Access Telecom ACN Advanced Mobile Alpha Telecom ASDA AT&T Atlantic Telecom AXS Telecom Axxon Telecom Ltd British Gas Communications British Telecom - UK Broadsystem Ventures Ltd BT Cellnet C2000 Ltd Cable and Wireless plc Cable Communications Association - UK Cable Franchise Areas Cable London Cable London Business Callmate Callnet0800 Call Sciences Ltd Callserve Cambridge Cable Cellcom Ltd Colt Telecommications Coulomb Internet Payments Systems ComTel Connaught Telecom Connect Free Dial 1602 Diamond Cable Online Ltd Digital Mail Direct Interface (Cable London) Dolphin Easynet Group PLC Ecosse Telecom Eircom UK Ltd Energis Esprit Telecom Euphony Communications Limited Eurobell European Digital Telecommunications European Gateway First Telecom PLC Flextel Freechariot Future Numbers GKC Communications Global One Communications HighwayOne Corporation Ltd Interglobe Telecommunications Interoute Telecommunications Just-Dial KDD Europe Kingston Communications (HULL) PLC LCR Telecommunications LDI Long Distance International Level 3 Communications LocalTel London Digital Telecommunications Madge Networks Ltd MCI WorldCom MFS Communications Company - USA M-line Telecommunications MSDigital Nationwide Telecom Netkonect Communications Ltd nevada tele.com Next Call NETnet (ACC/WorldxChange) NTL Norweb Communicatons One.Tel One2One Opal Telecommunications Orange - UK Personal Numbers Phone Co-Op Phonecard Services Planet Talk Powergen Presto Phone PrimeTEC (UK) Ltd Primus Quip Redstone Telecom RSL Communications Savant Sage Telecom Servista Skymaker Solar Sprint Holding (UK) Ltd Stentor Communications Ltd SuperLINE Swiftcall Swiftnet Talksense Telco Global Communications Telecom Plus Teleconnect Communications Teleglobe Telenium (Europe) Ltd Telstra (Australia) Telstra UK Tele2 Communications Services Ltd Telecommunications 2000 Telefficiency Telegroup UK Ltd Telesave Telewest Communications - UK
Telia
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This report was completed in December 2000 for the class Impacts of National Information Technology Environments on Business given by Prof. Carmel in the program of Management Of Global Information Technology at the Kogod School of Business at American University in Washington D.C.