The telecommunications infrastructure in the United Kingdom provides Internet access to homes and businesses mainly through fibre, cable, mobile and fixed wireless networks, with the UK's 140-year-old copper network, maintained by Openreach, set to be withdrawn by December 2025, although this has since been extended to 31st January 2027 in some areas due to reasons including panic alarms in sheltered housing needing a persistent connection which can't be guaranteed with internet-based DECT systems.
[7] According to the Office of National Statistics and the Government of the United Kingdom's Culture, Media & Sport and Science, Innovation & Technology departments, the digital sector was worth more than £140 billion to the UK's economy per year, as of 2020.
In particular, Donald Davies independently invented and pioneered packet switching and associated computer network design at the National Physical Laboratory starting in 1965;[20] internetworking was pioneered by Peter Kirstein at University College London beginning in 1973 (with new concepts for internetworking developed by Louis Pouzin in France around the same time);[21][22] and Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989 while working at CERN in Switzerland.
[30][31] In June that year, he gave a paper "Time Sharing in Large Fast Computers" at the UNESCO Information Processing Conference in Paris where he passed the concept on to J. C. R.
[40][41][42] Donald Davies, Derek Barber and Roger Scantlebury joined the International Network Working Group (INWG) in 1972 along with researchers from the United States and France.
[43][44][45][46] Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn acknowledged Davies and Scantlebury in their seminal 1974 paper "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication".
[47] Peter Kirstein's research group at University College London (UCL) was one of the first two international connections on the ARPANET in 1973, alongside the Norwegian Seismic Array (NORSAR).
[60] Roger Camrass, with his supervisor, Robert Gallager, at MIT, showed packet switching to be optimal in the Huffman coding sense in 1978.
Based on datagrams, the network linked Euratom, the French research centre INRIA and the UK’s National Physical Laboratory in 1976.
[79][80][81] Building on the work of James H. Ellis in the late 1960s, Clifford Cocks and Malcolm Williamson invented a public-key cryptography algorithm in 1973.
[86] PSS connected to the International Packet Switched Service (IPSS), which was created in 1978 through a collaboration between Post Office Telecommunications and two US telecoms companies.
[91] Logica, together with the French company SESA, set up a joint venture in 1975 to undertake the Euronet development, using X.25 protocols to form virtual circuits.
[102] For a period in the late 1980s and early 1990s, engineers, organizations and nations became polarized over the issue of which standard, the OSI model or the Internet protocol suite would result in the best and most robust computer networks.
[128][120] Broadband allowed the signal in one line to be split between telephone and Internet data, meaning users could be online and make phone calls at the same time.
[129] Broadband Internet access in the UK was, initially, provided by a number of regional cable television and telephone companies which gradually merged into larger groups.
The development of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology has allowed broadband to be delivered via traditional copper telephone cables.
[134][135] The Ofcom Communications Market 2018[136] report showed 42% of adults had access and use of a Smart TV by 2018, compared to just 5% in 2012[137] exemplifying the extra bandwidth required by broadband providers on their networks.
Whilst Virgin Media is the nearest direct competitor, their quad play product is available to fewer homes given the fixed nature of their cable infrastructure.
[145] Exchanges continue to be upgraded, subject to demand, across the country, although at a somewhat slower pace since BT's commencement of FTTC rollout plans and near-saturation in key geographical areas.
[b] For BT Wholesale ADSL products, users initially had to live within 3.5 kilometres of the local telephone exchange to receive ADSL, but this limit was increased thanks to rate-adaptive digital subscriber line (RADSL), although users with RADSL possibly had a reduced upstream rate, depending on the quality of their line.
As internet bandwidth depended on the capabilities of local lines, BT's '20CN' system negotiated stable ADSL synchronisation rate limits ranging from 160 kbit/s to 7.15 Mbit/s.
[149] The roll-out was paused on ECI broadband cabinet equipment due to the lack of support for upstream re-transmission which caused network slowdowns and higher latency.
[161] This means that mixed technologies are allowed, for example Virgin Media can continue to use their cable infrastructure since the DOCSIS 3.1 is "gigabit-capable" and other ISPs can also sell 5G broadband.
[162] The company deployed 500 km of 800 fiber optic cables[163] in London with 10 to 100 Gbit/s speeds connected directly to premises (FTTP) without a copper-and-cabinet middleman.
[178] In a similar way, on 13 August 2004, Wanadoo (formerly Freeserve, and part of what is now EE), was told by ASA to change the way that they advertised their 512 kbit/s broadband service, requiring the company to remove the words "full speed".
[180] Still in the year 2015 it was common in highly developed areas like the London Aldgate region for consumers to be limited to speeds of up to 8 Mbit/s for ADSL services.
According to a report by the Worldwide Broadband Speed League, a global leader in internet testing and analysis, the UK had risen to 35th place, having been ranked in 43rd position the year before.
Northern Ireland’s full fibre position reflects significant early commercial rollout and publicly funded schemes designed to improve broadband in rural areas.
[citation needed] In June 2018 Tom Winsor, HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary, argued that technologies like encryption should be breakable if law enforcers have a warrant.
The steps they take to make sure their services cannot be abused by terrorists, paedophiles and organised criminals are inadequate; the commitment they show and their willingness to be held to account are questionable.