British Telecom and the communications industry after Beesley

It has been said recently that British Telecom, its customers and a very important part of British industry, the telecommunications industry, are undergoing a revolution in their mode of operation. We've already had the first part of that revolution and there has been an attempt to compress into a period of roughly two and a half years what has taken in the United States something like thirteen to fifteen years. The second stage of that revolution was promised for later in 1982 if, as has been suggested, there is to be a further Telecommunications Bill introduced, and then, subject to the views of the electorate, there will be an even more fundamental change promised for the end of 1983/84 which will give a total conversion of British Telecom from a public corporation into a Company's Act type of company. So, talking today about the future is very difficult, and I am reminded of the Greek farmer, Agememnon, who, when he had planted his crop, went to the local soothsayer—we were then in a very primitive stage of information technology—and said ‘Well, I planted my crop, what's going to happen?’ And the local soothsayer, using the technology he had at the time, cast his runes, looked into the entrails, and so on, and said ‘I will give you a definite forecast. Providing that you have used the right seed, you have planted it at the right depth, provided the soil is of good quality, provided that the amount of rain is just enough and not too much, provided that the wind gently bows the ripening corn rather than flattens it’, he said, ‘you will have a good harvest’. And then, I think, with all the temerity of people who control information, he realised he'd gone too far out on a limb and he said, ‘But above all beware of the locusts.’ And in talking about the future, British Telecom, the telecoms industry and our customers, I'm very conscious at the moment of the locusts who are floating around our heads daily and it's sometimes difficult to sleep for the noise of the buzzing.