ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates the propensity of British governments over a long period to starve telecommunications of the finance necessary for its development. Basically telecommunications was used as a revenue source by the Treasury until the 1960s. Even after the Post Office Act of 1961 and the demand that it should make a return on capital, telecommunications profits were used as cross-subsidies for the postal services. The chapter discusses governmental decisions, political debate on the structure and organisation of the Post Office and focuses on intervention in the cartel arrangement between suppliers and Post Office. It looks at the politics of technological decisions taken by the Post Office, and at intervention in the industry's structure. The Post Office retained a monopoly on the maintenance of private telephone exchanges attached to the public network, thereby protecting the jobs of Post Office engineers.
