The Scottish inventor, Mr Alexander Graham Bell, created his first telephone in 1875 in Boston, USA. On 10th March 1876, he spoke the first recognisable words on the telephone, which were: "Mr Watson, come here, I want you". The growth of the telephone did not happen overnight, although the Telephone Company Ltd was formed in 1878 in the UK to sell telephones. This was taken over by the Post Office in 1912, which then controlled almost the entire telephone network in the UK. The modern day telecommunications company, BT, does not trace its origins from this point, but goes further back to the Electric Telegraph Company, which was incorporated in 1846. BT describes this company as the first company to develop a communications network across the entire country, and says that "within ten years an international network had been developed, making communications possible within minutes and hours instead of days and weeks".
However, the growth of the telephone was rather slow and steady in the first half of the twentieth century, a period perhaps best known for economic difficulties and two world wars. It was in the second half of the century that technology really moved ahead in leaps and bounds. In the UK, Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) codes were first introduced in 1958 to allow people to call another telephone without having to phone the operator and asking to be connected. On 5th December Queen Elizabeth II called the Lord Provost of Edinburgh from the Bristol Central Telephone Exchange across 300 miles to mark the occasion. Her Majesty then pressed a switch putting 18,000 telephones onto the new system, although it took another 21 years for the system to be completed.
Big developments then came thick and fast as Britain entered what Harold Wilson famously described as the white heat of the technological revolution. In 1959, "subscribers" to the telephone system became "customers". Previously, operators had only been able to say "number please" to their subscribers, but were now allowed to wish their customers a good day! Pay-on-answer coin boxes on public telephones also began to be introduced in 1959. The Post Office first introduced freephone to subscribers in 1959. It introduced a freephone services for business users in 1960, which was the forerunner of the BT Freefone and Lo-call services.
Until 1969 the Post Office remained as a government department with the Postmaster-General sitting in cabinet. In 1969 it became a public corporation (or nationalised industry) at the recommendation of the then Labour minister, Tony Benn. This split the Post Office into two separate businesses – one for post and one for telecommunications.
Following a decade of strikes, three day weeks and economic woes, the telecommunications side of the Post Office was named British Telecom in 1980 by Sir Keith Joseph, Industry Secretary in Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government. British Telecom remained part of the Post Office until the following year, when it became a separate public corporation under the British Telecommunications Act 1981. The act also created some competition in communications, with Mercury Communications Ltd created in 1982 as the main competitor to British Telecoms. This was a consortium of Cable & Wireless, British Petroleum and Barclays Merchant Bank. In 1983, British Telecoms and Mercury Communications were given a duopoly on Britain's telecommunications for seven years until 1991, when full competition was allowed. British Telecoms became a Public Limited Company (plc) in 1984, being privatised throughout the rest of the 1980s and right up until the final sell off in 1993. Oftel (the Office of Telecommunications) was created to regulate it, which was transferred to OFCOM (Office of Communications) in 2003. British Telecoms became BT in 1991, and is now one of the largest communications companies in the world.
Trials of the Linkline 0800 and 0345 services began on 12 November 1985 with BT. 0345 numbers were later marketed as Lo-Call (a combination of it being a low cost call and being charged at a local rate rather than a premium rate). The equivalent number with Mercury was 0645. BT's 0345 numbers and Mercury's 0645 numbers were replaced by one number – 0845 – as part of the Big Number change on 22nd April 2000. 0845 numbers were charged as local numbers until 2004, although this does now vary.
Such changes as these have occurred across the decades, with one of the biggest changes being PhONE day on 16th April 1995, when the number 1 was inserted into all UK geographic codes after the 0 and numbers were expanded to make sure there was room for more phone numbers.