FROM THE INDUSTRY
My passion for telecommunications has captivated me for over four decades. Throughout this time, I’ve been in awe of the remarkable advancements we’ve made, and the future possibilities are nothing short of mind-boggling. I consider myself fortunate to have spent the majority of my career during a period of unprecedented growth and transformation in the world of ubiquitous communications. At one pivotal moment in our development, the phrase ‘How the Internet Will Change How Society Works, Lives, Learns, and Entertains’ became a guiding vision. Today, as an industry, we’ve made that vision a reality. Yet in the face of this monumental achievement, we’ve rarely paused to reflect or take pride in how far we’ve come. One great British leader who comes to mind is Sir Winston Churchill. I wonder right now, how he might have addressed the country or Parliament in one of his rousing speeches, especially about communications in the UK: “Dear Mr Speaker, we Britons have long had a peculiar habit of talking to ourselves, then, thankfully, to each other and eventually to the world. It began with smoke signals and semaphore, then with copper coils and crank-handles. We sent telegrams across oceans, voices down wires, and at one proud moment, the Queen herself emailed from an army base. What a time to be alive! From the whispering walls of the Telegraph Office to the laboratories of Marconi and Turing, Britain did not merely keep pace, we set it. Ours was the spark that lit the fuse of global communications. We were the first to string cables across continents, to conjure invisible signals across air and sea, and to give the world that marvellous invention: the ‘Speaking Clock’. And now, Mr Speaker, we find ourselves on the brink of yet another great leap, not from copper to fibre, but from classical certainty to quantum strangeness. Where information is no longer just fast it is ‘entangled’. Where security is not just strong, it is absolute. Some speak of this as if it were tomorrow’s dream. I say it is already underway here, in Britain. From our universities in Cambridge and Oxford to the quantum corridors of Harwell and Bristol, we are not passengers, we are pilots and path finders. Let others broadcast their ambitions, we shall quietly secure the future. Let others boast of their satellites and networks, we shall build ours with rigour and reason. For as it was in
today.
the days of Wheaton, Faraday, Maxwell, Berners-Lee, so it is now: the signal rises in Britain and long may it transmit.”
The story of telecommunications is not merely one of technological innovation; it is a profound tale of the human desire to connect, to bridge the vast distances that separate us, and to make our presence felt, even when we are not physically there. What a journey it has been. From those humble buildings, we have built an intricate web that ties the world together. Silent threads that hum with the pulse of human connection. In these places, long overlooked, rests the essence of progress itself. From Silence to Sound The story begins, humbly, with a wire and a whisper. In 1876, when Alexander Graham Bell placed that first call: “Mr Watson, come here, I want to see you” the world shifted ever so slightly on its axis. It wasn’t just a voice that travelled across the wire it was the possibility and potential that would have intrigued me, should I have been party to that era. It was the first thread in what would become a vast, humming, global web of human connection. The early days were about marvel and mechanics. Wooden switchboards with ‘Doll’s Eye indicators”. Copper lines stretched across forests and fields. Manual operators, patching calls like weavers of some invisible living fabric. You could almost hear the breath of progress in those clicks and clacks. For decades, telecommunications grew like ivy: slow, methodical, and deeply rooted in its physicality. Each new telephone exchange, each cable trench, each handset was a small miracle of human ingenuity and determination. The phone wasn’t just a
From Copper Whispers to Quantum Dreams
A few months ago I found myself standing in front of Weybridge Telephone Exchange building in Surrey. A squat, grey and brick structure perched at the edge of the town. Long been forgotten by most, barely noticed by those who pass by now. The paint was peeling, the door, once bustling with the steady rhythm of engineers coming and going, now rusted and still. There was no plaque, no sign to commemorate its once-vital role. Yet, I knew exactly what it was. As I stood there, a deep sense of recognition stirred within me. I remembered being told off for not wiping my shoes correctly on the door mat adorned with the GPO emblem on one of those wet winter days heading on to the Exchange floor, something that evoked a deep sense of pride that was instilled in the era.
It may seem strange to feel a swell of emotion in front of such an
unassuming building. But for those of us who have walked the long road of telecommunications, who’ve soldered lines, tuned signal paths, provisioned services, and optimised networks, these structures are far more than just buildings. They are the cathedrals of progress, silent but resolute sentinels of connection. As I stood before it, I couldn’t help but trace the journey in my mind, from the days of clunky electromechanical switches to the near-magical fibre-light symphonies of
Signage wordplay on a sorry-looking redundant telephone exchange in Ottershaw, Surrey
SEPTEMBER 2025 Volume 47 No.3
77
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