Mercury Communications Limited

Mercury Communications was a national telephone company in the United Kingdom, formed in 1981 as a subsidiary of Cable & Wireless, to challenge the then-monopoly of British Telecom (BT). In 1997, Mercury ceased to exist as a brand with its amalgamation into the operations of Cable & Wireless Communications, and totally exited from the telecommunications business by 1999.In 1981, Mercury Communications, Ltd. – a consortium of Cable & Wireless, Barclays, and British Petroleum (BP) – was founded as an experiment in telecommunications competition, primarily with British Telecom. Its first chairperson was Sir Michael Edwardes, known for his success in turning around British Leyland. Mercury Communications was first licensed in 1982; and became a full Public Telecommunications Operator in 1984. The same year, Cable & Wireless bought out the stake of its partners.In July 1991, Mercury's sister concern, Mercury Personal Communications Network (PCN) Ltd, was awarded one of the licences to develop build Personal communications network (PCN) networks in United Kingdom. One2One was established as the trading name of Mercury Personal Communications, a joint venture partnership equally owned by Cable & Wireless and US West International, a division of US WEST Media Group. Mercury forged strategic alliances with 16 UK cable companies, which enabled them to offer both telephone and television services to their customers. By the end of January 1993, over 117,000 telephone lines were supplied to cable operators by Mercury. In October 1996, Mercury was merged with three cable operators in the UK (Vidéotron, Nynex and Bell Cable media) and renamed Cable & Wireless Communications. Following this, the group embarked on a major disposal programme, selling One2One to T-Mobile in 1999, then selling its stake in CWC’s consumer operations to NTL (now Virgin Media) in 2000.