British Telecom
BT Group plc (commonly known as 'British Telecom' or just BT) is the privatised former British state telecommunications operator. It is still the dominant telecommunications provider in the United Kingdom.
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2 BT as it is today 3 BT's "Web patent" 4 See also 5 External links |
BT owns and runs the telephone exchanges , trunk network and local loop connections for the vast majority of British fixed-line telephones.
It is officially designated the dominant operator in British telecommunications market. BT's businesses are operated under special government regulation by the British telecoms regulator Ofcom (formerly known as Oftel).
Oftel's strategy for telecoms deregulation in the UK through the 1990s was to drive down BT’s market share. It aimed to achieve this by restrictions on the size of its price increases and by forcing it to allow other telcos to gain access to the connection between the exchange and the customers premises.
This has been successful in the area of telephony resale through Independent Service Providers but has left BT as the dominant operator in ADSL connections and local loop provision.
History of BT
BT as it is today
The former mobile telecommunications business of BT ("BT Cellnet") has now been demerged into a separate business named "mmO2". This was a move designed to remove the burden of debt with which the company had encumbered itself, much of which was acquired during the bidding round for the 3rd generation mobile telephony (commonly known as 3G) licenses.
See also:
BT's "Web patent"
BT has a controversial patent, US patent number 4873662, which it claims gives it a monopoly on the technology of hyperlinks on the World Wide Web. Opponents of BT's claims hold that the patent is not valid, due to prior art by both Douglas Englebart and Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu. On February 11, 2002, a court case relating to BT's claims started in a US federal court against Prodigy Communications Corporation. Whilst the UK license has long since expired, the US patent is not due to expire until 2006.
A U.S. court ruled on August 22, 2002 that the BT patent is not applicable to Web technology, and granted Prodigy's request for summary judgment.
See also
External links