In the mid-1980s, British Telecom chose the well established AXE10 digital switch to provide competition for System X developed by a consortium of Plessey, General Electric Company (GEC) (companies later combined as GPT), STC and BT's state owned predecessor, the GPO.
The newly privatised BT brought in Ericsson as a competitive alternative supplier ending Plessey/GEC's monopoly on the provision of switching systems.
Initially, the AXE systems installed in the UK were partially locally manufactured in partnership with Thorn EMI and later directly by Ericsson.
RSS acts as a remote concentrator and deals with the conversion of analogue telephony signals used in the access network, which is the copper pairs between exchange buildings and customer premises, also called local loop, and the multiplexing of customer lines over cabling to the AXE10 local switching unit.
BT's AXE10 network, which has been in service since 1986,[2] is maintained in house by its own engineers although Ericsson still provide high-level support, software upgrades and repairs at component level.