1990s

History

1990

Another UK milestone is completed in Scotland, as BT's long distance network goes totally digital with the closure of the electro-mechanical exchange at Thurso. This completes the trunk lines modernisation programme, begun back in 1985, and the UK becomes the first country in the world to have a fully-digital trunk network.

1991

The Government's White Paper "Competition and Choice: Telecommunications policy for the 1990s" is issued, ending the duopoly which had been shared by British Telecom and Mercury since November 1983. The new, more open and fairer policy allows customers to acquire telecoms services from competing providers using a variety of technologies. And reselling is born - independent retail companies are now permitted to bulk-buy telecoms capacity and sell it in packages to business and domestic users. On April 2 British Telecom is laid to rest, re-emerging blinking into the sunshine as BT, trading as British Telecommunications plc. It's a company ready to face the competitive challenges of the 90s following a huge programme of change called Sovereign, to reflect the company's commitment to meeting customer needs - "The customer is King". The new BT is launched with a new corporate identity suitable for a quality company in a highly competitive world marketplace. And the changes pave the way to give BT the foundation to achieve its vision - to be the most successful telecommunications group in the world. Braille and large print bills are offered for the first time, the half-way stage is reached in switching local exchanges to digital working and BT appoints its first woman board member.

1992

The world-leading BT Commitment is launched with compensation for missed appointments and customers whose service is not restored by the end of the next working day after the fault is reported. Scottish newspapers and TV stations carry adverts telling everyone that "We Put Our Customers First". A network of malicious calls bureaux is set up throughout the country, with Scottish callers being handled sympathetically by specially-trained staff at a bureau in Dundee. The Dundee centre deals with around 1000 calls a week from worried BT customers. More than half are dealt with through advice and help but some have to change their number and others have traces put on their lines to catch the phone pests. The good news today is that more and more people are being caught, cautioned and convicted of making malicious calls. BT clocks up a world first in the Highlands and Islands as 10 directory enquiry operators working in and around Inverness begin a year working from home in a unique teleworking experiment. Homework is no chore for the operators, who are linked to the exchange by videophones which they use to chat to supervisors. For the next 12 months, customers dialling 192 in the north of Scotland could have their queries answered by operators like mother-of-two Mrs Margaret Duncan, sitting at a specially adapted computer terminal in the kitchen of her detached home in Forres. The commuting time saved cuts their working day by up to two hours and they take up new hobbies or spend more time with their families. The experiment goes on to facilitate the development of new systems to satisfy the increasing demand for alternative ways of working. A payphone at Cockburnspath in East Lothian becomes the first in the UK to be powered by the latest, high-efficiency, solar panels. Three others follow soon afterwards in North-east Scotland - at the Pass of Ballater, Cambus o'May and Lhanbryde. The kiosks are fitted with a light-sensitive device which switches the light on at dusk, and turns it off at daybreak. BT began experimenting with solar power in 1989, establishing 40 kiosks nationwide. A hot summer ensured the trial went well initially, but with the onset of winter around half the panels failed! The village of Sandhaven near Fraserburgh dials up its fifteen minutes of fame when its payphone becomes the first in the UK to be lit by wind and solar power. Still with payphones, the last A&B button box on mainland Britain is consigned to history, on the windswept shore of Loch Eriboll in Sutherland. Built in 1954 on the road between Tongue and Durness in one of the loneliest spots in Britain, it would have cost an incredible £2600 if normal construction had been used. Instead, it was decided to operate the service via a VHF radio link at a more modest cost of £720. The story goes that when a US fleet anchored in the deep-water loch, one of the vessels blocked the radio link to the box, and an American admiral received the unusual request: "Would you mind moving one of your battleships a bit so that we can make a phone call?" BT's 100,000th public payphone comes into service.

1993

A major alliance with MCI of the United States is hailed as "the deal of the century," and the Government sells the remainder of its shares in BT, completing the privatisation process.

1994

Peak rate charging is abolished, long distance charges are cut and BT receives the world's largest quality registration. BT begins trials of Interactive TV services. Caller Display and Call Return services are launched after successful trials in Moray, Perthshire and Edinburgh, and Scottish customers now know who's calling before they answer the phone. A&B buttons, which were introduced in 1925 and survived many kiosk changes, finally bow out with the decommissioning of the last unit on the remote Shetland island of Papa Stour. Time and technology catch up with Papa Stour 224 as islander Ted Gray uses a handful of old 5p pieces to make a final call, watched by an audience of islanders, TV crews, bemused sheep and a gaggle of geese. In button boxes, callers pushed the A button to deposit their coins into the cashbox and transmit the call. If the call could not be connected or there was no reply, they pushed the B button to get their money back. The mechanism was originally designed to detect the presence of two pennies by a weighing operation. The operator instruction "Press Button B and try again later" became a national catchphrase. BT launches the UK's biggest ever marketing campaign with top actor Bob Hoskins telling us "It's good to talk" and he hits the spot, because each time he pops up on our TV screens, the number of calls on the network goes up!

1995

BT becomes the first major national telephone operator anywhere in the world to change its entire network over to per second pricing by abolishing unit-based charging for all its customers. A new era 0of split-second timing and pricing makes it easier for customers to see the cost of calls, which have been cut by more than £1 billion since December 1993. The new era is ushered in at Crawford in Lanarkshire on June 23 when BT switches off the last of its old mechanical exchanges and replaces it with state-of-the-art computerised technology. Crawford Primary School nine-year-olds Lyn Anderson and Adam Fordyce switch on the new digital exchange seconds after engineers slice through cables to cut off the old unit and silence the familiar clicking and whirring sounds of calls being connected. Strowger is no more! BT's initiative has been made possible by its £20 billion investment in the UK phone network over the past 11 years - enough to build two Channel Tunnels. More than £2 billion has been invested in Scotland, where current investment is running at £500,000 every working day. In 1984 BT inherited a network of more than 6700 exchanges - 1185 in Scotland - many of which were based on electro-mechanical technology developed 100 years ago. All have been replaced by modern exchanges and a network of computerised billing centres which can charge calls with the precision required for per second pricing. Scottish customers begin to come to terms with the extra digit "1" which has been added to dialling codes to meet burgeoning demand for new numbers.

1996

Scotland starts to surf with the launch of BT Internet and BT clicks open its own world wide website, bt.com following development work by staff in Edinburgh and Aberdeen. Smart payphones and phonecards are launched, with an embedded chip which stores talk time.

1997

BT agrees to sell its 20 per cent stake in MCI to Worldcom.

1998

BT Scotland is officially launched on 20 June before 500 invited guests in a marquee in the grounds of Holyrood Palace, just yards from the future location of the Scottish Parliament. It's the first company to be given permission for an event in the Palace grounds and the site is particularly significant, because BT Scotland has been formed in response to the creation of the new Parliament. In an editorial on the setting up of BT Scotland, the Edinburgh Evening News comments: "Such a tremendous boost from BT can do the new Parliament's early standing nothing but good." BT Scotland unveils a five-year investment programme in which it will invest in its Scottish network at the rate of £200 every single minute of every single day including: £100 million to improve data links around the country to meet increasing demand for data communications and Internet services; £20 million to upgrade Cellnet coverage in Scotland, in addition to £20m already committed to upgrades in the Highlands and Islands; £5million to bring enhanced services to 220 digital exchanges in the Borders, Dumfries and Galloway and Tayside, on top of £8m to upgrade 200 exchanges in the Highlands and Islands; £400 million on additional network capacity and new technology. A £59 million exchange modernisation programme in Glasgow is completed when the last 5700 customers in the city become fully digital. The upgrading programme, which kicked off in 1986, has allowed over 460,000 customers throughout the Glasgow area to benefit from clearer lines and faster call connections. AT&T and BT announce a $10bn global venture to serve all the communications needs of multinational business customers and carriers, and BT takes the wraps off a free e-mail address service for all to mark the Millennium.

1999

Hampden gets its roar back as BT Scotland becomes its first official sponsor in a £5 million commercial partnership which will run until at least 2008. The new South Stand is named The BT Scotland Stand. BT Scotland invests £120m, underlining its commitment to Scotland, by opening two new flagship offices in Glasgow and Edinburgh and upgrading properties in Aberdeen, Dundee and Inverness. The Glasgow building is named after Alexander Bain, father of the modern fax machine, who was born on a croft at Watten, Caithness, in 1810. His inventions in telegraphy led to him being credited with the first facsimile transmission, when his chemical recording telegraph transmitted 282 words in 52sec between Paris and Lille. Not content with that, he also patented a fire alarm, a railway signal, a loudspeaker and an electric clock, and his subsequent invention of the electro-magnetic pendulum led to Greenwich Mean Time being adopted in the UK. The Edinburgh office commemorates the work of another prolific Scottish inventor - the man who started it all, Alexander Graham Bell. We began this potted history of telecommunications with the nine little words first spoken on the telephone by Bell, and it's fitting that we end it as BT Scotland pays tribute to the man whose inventiveness and foresight was the catalyst that created the fastest-moving and most exciting industry in the world today.