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In the United Kingdom, the main civil telecommunications system was a state monopoly known as Post Office Telecommunications (POT). Broadcasting of radio and television was under the jurisdiction of two – BBC and Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA).   These two organisations controlled all broadcast services, and directly owned and operated the broadcast transmitter sites. Speaking of telecommunications systems at that time did not yet include mobile phone and Internet services.

But the civil telecoms monopoly halted with the entry of Mercury Communications (MC) in 1983. The Post Office system evolved into British Telecom and was privatised in 1984.  The broadcast transmitters, which belonged to the BBC and IBA before underwent privatization in the 1990s.  They are currently owned by  National Grid Wireless, VT Communications and Arqiva.

Telecommunications policies and regulations have gone through many changes and modifications during the same period, and most of the bodies have been merged into Ofcom, the independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries.

Third Generation

The 3rd generation system is a product of technological improvements, essentially an improvement of the available bandwidth.  This makes it possible for new service offerings to telecommunications subscribers. Such services include streaming of live radio or video, video calls and live TV.

The telecoms provider 3 has the biggest 3G coverage as they first rolled out their network coverage in March 2003, way before the others did theirs. But Vodafone and Orange rival 3 in terms of its reach.  T-Mobile and o2 has fairly good coverage but both generally get concentrate  in major cities and less so in smaller towns.  However T-Mobile and 3 recently entered into a deal whereby they can use each others 3g coverage.  But in this deal, 3’s 3G customers don’t have access to T-Mobile 2G coverage. An additional agreement has also been struck by 3 with Orange until 2010, under the terms that Orange’s 2G coverage is available to 3 subscribers where no 3G signal exists. This arrangement however, is deemed to become less significant as 3 and T-Mobile roll-out their shared 3G networks. Subscribers of 3 , all things being equal, stand to  have the best coverage of any UK mobile network.