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Concept
Cable & Wireless plc
Summary
Cable & Wireless plc was a British telecommunications company. In the mid-1980s, it became the first company in the UK to offer an alternative telephone service to British Telecom (via subsidiary Mercury Communications). The company later offered cable TV to its customers, but it sold its cable assets to NTL in 2000. It remained a significant player in the UK telecoms market and in certain overseas markets, especially in the former British colonies of the Caribbean, where it was formerly the monopoly incumbent. It was also the main supplier of communication in the British South Atlantic, including Saint Helena and the Falkland Islands. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
The company split in March 2010, with its international division demerging to form Cable & Wireless Communications, acquired by Liberty Global in 2015, and since spun-off in 2018 from Liberty Global to Liberty Latin America, while the remainder of the Cable & Wireless business became Cable & Wireless Worldwide and was acquired by Vodafone in 2012.
Cable and Wireless traces its history back to a number of British telegraph companies founded in the 1860s, and cites Sir John Pender as the founder. In 1869, Pender founded the Falmouth, Malta, Gibraltar Telegraph Company and the British Indian Submarine Telegraph Company, which connected the Anglo-Mediterranean cable (linking Malta to Alexandria using a cable manufactured by one of Pender's companies) to Britain and India, respectively. The London to Bombay telegraph line was completed in 1870, and in 1872 the three companies were merged with the Marseilles, Algiers and Malta Telegraph Company to form the Eastern Telegraph Company, with Pender as chairman.
The Eastern Telegraph Company expanded the cable length from 8,860 miles on its founding to 22,400 miles just 15 years later. The company steadily took over a number of companies founded to connect the West Indies and South America, among them the Eastern Extension Australasia and China Telegraph Company, leading to a name change to The Eastern and Associated Telegraph Companies in 1902.
Official source
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