Monopoly and competition in British telecommunications

the long version

This book is an insider's account of the major developments in the UK's telecommunications industry. The author argues that the present-day British experiment with competing public telecommunications networks is hindering, not helping, competition and the development of information highways in the UK. He makes radical proposals for a new telecommunications structure for Britain and the countries of the EU. The volume includes a detailed financial and statistical assessment of Post Office and BT performance up to the present day. It also provides first-hand accounts of the problems of managing a big utility in the stop-go economy of the 1970s, of the increasingly stormy industrial relations record in those years, and of the tortuous story underlying the System X digital exchange development programme.