Professor Mellor delivering the talk to an attentive group of telecom personnel

Five officials from the telecom division in the Ministry of Economic Planning participated in an interactive talk at Cable & Wireless' Exiles club recently.

The talk, initiated by Cable & Wireless (Seychelles), was given by professor David P. Mellor, the chairman of the United Kingdom Telecommunication Academy, who was in the country for the setting up of the Cable & Wireless Virtual Academy.    

During his presentation, professor Mellor retraced the history and evolution of British Telecom over the past 20 years, highlighting distinct events such as the liberalisation, creation of Office Telephone (OFTEL), Mercury, Pascal Vodafone and cell net, between 1981 and 1984.    

According to professor Mellor, the various changes in UK Telecom has increased .its profits considerably, through events such as the 1994 duopoly-review, deciding to open up the market, followed by the liberalisation of mobile services in 1995, hence allowing big creative companies to become an entity.                                                                          

In 1995/96, UK witnessed the formation of certain new developments – voice telephone directive and interconnect direct line –  and in 1998, there was the creation of a website and numbering directives.

The session turned out to be a very interactive one, whereby the participants had the opportunity to exchange their views with the professor on various issues.      

The telecom officials were also enlightened on the impact of liberalisation on telecommunication and how British Telecom (BT) has, however, still managed to successfully retain Significant Market Power (SMP) status.                

To end the session, the participants were provided with various website addresses to access further information on European directives, OFCOM, OFTEL and communications bills.

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