Hanging On The Phone - British Telecom Documentary 2001
2018 ж. 22 Ақп.
34 019 Рет қаралды
Hanging on the Phone: The Story of BT.
Air Date: C4, 8pm, 4th March, 2001.
The history of BT from its beginnings under the GPO through privatisation to its current problems as it was in 2001.
At 35.00 Mins was what looked like the BT Call Centre at Westbrook, Warrington. I worked there in 1997 with the people they actually Showed!!!
Spent 46 years with GPO, BT and Openreach. Valve Oscilloscopes to Fibre Broadband.
This is a fantastic documentary for anyone interested in telecom policy and the history of industry evolution. Does a fantastic job of documenting the pathologies of monopoly.
Indeed.... we had a similar situation in the US with AT&T (American Telephone & Telegraph) aka the Bell companies. Essentially they had a monopoly on landline communications until it was broken up by the government in 1984. They were charging inanely high prices for long distance and even inter-city calls. Of course nowadays with mobile phones the entire paradigm has changed for the better. :)
Thank you for sharing, I worked in BT last year, great company to work for.. Nice to see its history.
When I moved to Germany in 1985, the phone system was still a part of the post office here, as well. As a "starving student", for the longest time I didn't even have my own phone. To make an international call to my family in the U.S. I had to go to the central post office downtown and reserve a booth for a person-to-person call to my parents so that either of them could accept the charge. Needless to say, the calls were short and fees were horrendous. Thinking back, it's still amazing how things have changed.
it would have been cheaper to fly to usa in person
@@mikewatt8706 😊👍
"is your house on fire" sang so chirpily lol
I worked as a BT operator in the late ‘90s, employed by a large recruitment agency. We were treated like rubbish. The long-serving operators, employed directly by BT, loved to lord it over us, they couldn’t help themselves.
We must remember that BT wanted a full fibre to the home network from the late 80's and even set up factories to make the cable, unfortunately Maggie put a stop to it claiming that it should be private enterprise doing such a thing and not the monopoly telecoms operator.
dglcomputers ... Thatcher screwed up everything she touched.
Do you know how expensive that would have been at the time? Only now 30 years later, are we seeing the prices of the delivery of such services approaching anything reasonable in terms of practicality and market value. Even now, BT are moving extremely slowly. Fiber isn't the end-all and be-all of telecoms delivery. The way they move is the industry likes to pitch a service only to a point where they can generate a revenue from it. Compared to more efficient economies around the world this means the UK is always late, late and late.
You are all blind to Agenda 21, welcome today to communism, Maggie would never locked down over a virus with a 99.7% survival rate.
Complete nonsense..... and Total White Elephant ...... Why would BT spend £billions building a fibre infrastucture even before the World Wide Web was even invented???? No market for it whatsover, as was proven by NTL and MCI WorldCom spending billions and then filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2002.
@@patchymedia4892 Because they could see it was the future, www.techradar.com/uk/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost-the-broadband-race-in-1990-1224784
The exchange cutover shown at 26:22 was Upminster in 1970, not Holborn.
Very interesting, thanks for uploading.
British telephones answer machines information
I need help with information on vintage telephone set up please
At about 26 minutes in the narration refers to Holborn exchange BUT they are in fact showing a section from the London Telecommunications Region film showing the transfer of Upminster Exchange, the last CB1 (Central Battery) manual exchange in the London telephone Region to Crossbar (Plessey 5005) automatic: the first to be installed in the LTR and cut over on December 3rd 1970. VERY SLOPPY!
i often picked up my house phone in the late eighties and would find myself listening to two other callers chatting away. i used to wish i would overhear some gangsters talking about where their cash was hidden. lol
the only city in the uk that bt wasn't in was hull. they have Kingston communication still to this day
Sound like a great place to work
It's quite ironic the film focuses a lot on BT's headquarters at St. Pauls. BT has now sold off this HQ. I remember playing squash there as there were squash courts at the lower ground floor. I got forced out in 2009, they didn't need PBX engineers anymore.
I left in 92 and sites were being sold. Paid for by our fore-fathers' taxes and given to share-holders and bonuses to the jerkoids at the top.
I did my first training in Bristol and then two weeks at St Pauls wow long long time ago,I worked Oxfordshire ,I also did alot of digital conversions on the south coast system x and y Siemens and ericsson ..what is interesting in this docu is there is not one word mentioned about crossbar ? which was far far better than strowger
@@derek-press I’m working there now but with a crap pension scheme!
This was made 4 years before OFCOM forced BT to split Openreach.
Openreach was never split. It is just operated as a separate organisational unit of BT group. Last year that was pushed further to having our own board of directors and finances.
I meant BT was not split
They had to for BT's own sake if they'd admit it or not.
That was the deal or they would have been refused approval to buy EE as competitors brought up BT would have too much advantage but it’s now time to allow BT to do whatever it likes with its network and that includes Openreach, companies should build there own networks if they don’t like BT’s terms, many companies have already built there own networks serving homes and businesses
And the copper network went to ruin when BT Created Openreach, and then Openreach sub contracted work to the likes of Kellys and Quinns who didnt care about quality or accuracy and messed it up for all. Now Openreach have effectively abandoned the copper network, and the exchanges with SOGEA and left the remaining dregs of copper work to Contractors.
I've obviously confused myself in regards to Wartime history; I thought the Colossus was Alan Turing's invention.
Alan Turing was responsible for breaking the enigma code
They still rip me off for my full fibre 😃
'100 times faster'. I think he's talking about DSL.
I started working for the GPO in 1980 after working for plessey telecom for 10y on exchange construction. Strowger switch then cross bar ended up with system x.I retired from openreach 5y ago after 40y most of the time at the other end of the network has a pole tester safety checking the poles which for most of the time I was left alone to sort all of the poles in my area but some one Decided to control us and for the last few years had us going backwards and forwards over the same ground were I would have done it all in one go looking at the planet now with all the fibre things are getting over Loaded the is the just get working Attitude there now and safety is taking a back door
Why I left in 1960
All telco are struggling to survive today, burdened with the physical infrastructure while software SDN go OTT with everything… the former nationalised companies struggle to know how to compete….
Sir Ian Valance the downfall of BT!!
It’s crazy how antiquated 2001 looks nowadays. Oh and this didn’t age well, BT is now a powerhouse in the industry.
British Telecom has always been a rip off. Thank God we have a choice today.
So they spent millions repairing 78 000 phone boxes, just as mobile phones were coming on the scene ....
Similarly, at the time Cameron got elected he promised to turn us into an economy to compete with South Korea, which is wall-to-wall fibre. At the same time, BT were engaged in a copper renewal programme.
D'oh!
They added texting and email facilities to many, nowadays most are gone, and the few coinless kiosks are now free to use to mobiles and landlines.
They had a legal responsibility to do so
that wasn't the end of the madness. when the internet cane along the fitted internet phones into the phone boxes and hardly anybody used them because we already could use our mobile phones to do basic net surfing. so much money was wasted. now there are almost zero public phones to be seen.
Bloody hell
I spent a good part of my professional life as a 2nd free market telecomms operator fighting BT. They had no commercial savey and fought our attempts to improve things.
After watching this video, I am convinced that DWP came out of British Telecom redundancy and they still can't keep up with the times.
BT shares has dropped by 80% since then.
That's a load of bs for a start.
@@nudisco300 You can look, in 2001 it traded at around 950 a share, current price as of writing is 195.9 Per share. Not BS at all, if you just looked.
@@stantheman1998 If you're going to look into an historic price you need to know what's happened to the share capital structure of the business over that time frame. There was 2:1 share split in 2015 - for every BT share held you get another one free. This was done I think for the purchase of EE. There have also been several rights issues and a consolidation over that time frame. So it's not accurate to look at the 2001 price and compare it with the 2020 price. Apologies for how rude I sounded in the original reply. A better way would be to know the full market capitalisation of BT in 2001 and compare with its current capitalisation which I think is £19 billion. That's the pure market value of the business without having to worry about share splits, buy backs and rights issues.
Still waiting for FTTP to be affordable. Cheapest quote for 200/200mbps Over 1gbps is £275pm with an installation cost to the tune of £5'000. BT are a bloody joke and need to invest more and speed up the rollout for national FTTP.
They need to invest in renewable technologies that are easily recyclable. Not be investing in roll-outs, until the next stage of technological obsolescence.
@@Newtube_Channel Totally agree. True fiber to the premises. Is prob as future proof as you can get maybe 2x into the premises for redundancy or another service that could be sold or run by another company. (thinking tv services etc.
@@sonyp180 Digging up the earth constitutes a roll-out. FO isn't as future proof as you might think. It's just another cable after-all.
Darren Bannister Where in the UK do you live and what sort of product are you trying to get connected? I work within the Openreach newsites team. I’m very surprised at that costs.
Similar experience here, except they wouldn’t even give me a quote, or a timescale. Finally this year fibre just turned up along the road and I was able to ditch starlink.
Bbc4’s telecom documentary is way better.
What was this report an do you know where I can view it please?
@@neilcaldwell870 Dial 'B' for Britain: The Story of the Landline ?
John 3:16-21 16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God
are you talking about Ian Valance? I never thought he was god although he was the boss. My colleague pranked me into calling Mrs Valery Lance of Honeywell. The lady who answered assured me that someone was taking the piss :) That was about the time this film was made. Anyway, over 40 or so years I have worked with many wonderful BT colleagues who were actual gods who I miss to this day. I enjoyed much of my time working there. There are a wonderful mix of people from many different backgrounds who have taught me a lifelong lesson in humanity.
@@THEWIGMONSTER I worked for BT in various roles from 2014 till March 2021.. Both within BT and Openreach. The company is stats driven in every respect.. It's very set in its ways so I can't see it moving forward very fast and reacting quickly to changes. I feel like the power of the brand and its head start.. (monopoly?) is what's driving them, rather than any sort of innovation unfortunately. Made some amazing lifelong friends throughout my time at BT! Despite the negatives I would definitely consider working for the company again in the future of a suitable position was available..
Interesting but politically slanted documentary. BT could have been run as a non-departmental government body. BT (GPO) invented and prototyped the world’s first digital telephone exchange but was stifled by ministers and was told to buy Strowger instead. Privatisation has brought no benefit to consumers or businesses in the UK and over-regulation and meddling set fibre rollout back 30 years
That muppet Ian Vallance