ABSTRACT
The story of the development of the telecommunications equipment sector during the colonial epoch is of a piece with the rest of the capital and intermediate goods industry in the country at this time. Shortages occasioned by the onset of World War II reduced the reliance of the telephone and telegraph network on imports, coming in the main from the UK, and provided the impetus to begin producing certain kinds of equipment indigenously. In the 1950s, two other public sector companies would also come to be located here: HMT, specializing in the fabrication of machine tools, and BEL producing electronic components. Representing a fundamentally radical change, since nothing less than the adoption of a 'new technological paradigm' was at stake, ITI's transition from electro-mechanical to electronic systems turned out to be just as controversial and complicated as the strowger to crossbar transition.
