Mercury Communications
Encyclopedia
Telephone company
A telephone company is a service provider of telecommunications services such as telephony and data communications access. Many were at one time nationalized or state-regulated monopolies...
in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. The company was formed in 1981 as a subsidiary of Cable & Wireless
Cable & Wireless
Cable & Wireless Worldwide PLC is a global telecommunications company headquartered in Bracknell, United Kingdom. Cable & Wireless specialises in providing communication networks and services to large corporates, governments, carrier customers and resellers...
to challenge the monopoly
Monopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...
of British Telecom (BT) which was privatised
Privatization
Privatization is the incidence or process of transferring ownership of a business, enterprise, agency or public service from the public sector to the private sector or to private non-profit organizations...
in 1984. Mercury was the first competitor to BT, and although it proved only moderately successful at challenging their dominance, it was to set the path for new communication companies to attempt the same.
Residential phone services
Mercury began by offering fixed-line facilities direct to businesses, residential and small businessSmall business
A small business is a business that is privately owned and operated, with a small number of employees and relatively low volume of sales. Small businesses are normally privately owned corporations, partnerships, or sole proprietorships...
. Users could use the 'Mercury 2300' service via their existing BT phone line
Telephone line
A telephone line or telephone circuit is a single-user circuit on a telephone communication system...
by dialling a '131' prefix followed by a ten-digit customer code, then the number which they wished to dial. This was later replaced by a more modern indirect service which required only the dialling of the access code
Access Code
Access code may refer to:In authentication:* Password, a secret word.* Personal identification number , a secret numeric code.In telecommunications:* National access code, used to dial a domestic call....
(by then '132') and the destination number. Mercury also provided backbone services to the emerging groups of British cable operators which were beginning to offer their own fixed-line telephone services.
In 1997 the Mercury brand ceased to be and it was amalgamated into Cable & Wireless Communications. The consumer arm of the latter would eventually find itself bought out by the telecommunications firm NTL
NTL Ireland
NTL Communications Limited was a cable television and Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service company in the Republic of Ireland. As of 2005 it was owned by Liberty Global Europe , having been divested by NTL...
in 1999, and then further sold on to NPower
Npower
Npower may refer to:* Npower , a gas and electricity supply company in the UK, a subsidiary of RWE* NPower , a network of nonprofit technology assistance providers in the United States...
in 2001 before the service was withdrawn entirely some years later. Its name lives on through its original sponsorship of the Mercury Music Prize, now dubbed the 'Barclaycard Mercury Prize' in light of its most recent sponsors. The majority of the media, however, have not taken to using this new name.
Mercury moved into the Private Branch eXchange market in 1990 as a result of Telephone Rentals being bought by Cable & Wireless
Cable & Wireless
Cable & Wireless Worldwide PLC is a global telecommunications company headquartered in Bracknell, United Kingdom. Cable & Wireless specialises in providing communication networks and services to large corporates, governments, carrier customers and resellers...
. This enabled the Smart Box to be connected to a large number of TR's customers, so traffic was routed away from BT onto Mercury's network.
Mercury pulled out of the PABX market in 1996, when it sold that part of the business to Siemens, creating Siemens Business Communication Systems (SBCS)
Payphones and mobiles
From 1986 Mercury operated public payphones in the UK, in competition with BT. These proved not to be profitable and this interest was sold in 1995. They were notable for their varied designs which imitated architectural styles.Mercury also operated the first GSM 1800 mobile phone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
service, launched in 1993, as Mercury One2one. The service was first rolled out in the London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
M25
M25 motorway
The M25 motorway, or London Orbital, is a orbital motorway that almost encircles Greater London, England, in the United Kingdom. The motorway was first mooted early in the 20th century. A few sections, based on the now abandoned London Ringways plan, were constructed in the early 1970s and it ...
area, and offered free mobile to landline calls at off-peak times, weekends and Bank Holiday
Bank Holiday
A bank holiday is a public holiday in the United Kingdom or a colloquialism for public holiday in Ireland. There is no automatic right to time off on these days, although the majority of the population is granted time off work or extra pay for working on these days, depending on their contract...
s. Calls could be made free to landlines in the area the mobile was situated in, and to adjacent landline exchange codes. Even after this plan ceased being sold, SIM
Subscriber Identity Module
A subscriber identity module or subscriber identification module is an integrated circuit that securely stores the International Mobile Subscriber Identity and the related key used to identify and authenticate subscriber on mobile telephony devices .A SIM is held on a removable SIM card, which...
cards that were subscribed to the plan continued to provide these free calls, and often changed hands for large sums of money. Coverage was extended throughout the decade, with most of the UK having service by 1997. One2One was sold to Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom AG is a telecommunications company headquartered in Bonn, Germany. It is the largest telecommunications company in Europe....
in 1999 for £8.4bn, and was rebranded as T-Mobile
T-Mobile (UK)
T-Mobile UK is a mobile network and mobile broadband operator in the United Kingdom. It is owned and operated by Everything Everywhere, the UK's largest mobile network.- Company history :...
in 2002.