The UK government is preparing to make a decision on the privatisation of its internal speech telephony network, the Government Telecommunications Network (CI No 2,133). Talks are continuing with British Telecommunications Plc, Mercury Communications Ltd, Sprint International Inc and Australia’s Overseas Telecommunications Corp, all of which are expected to make formal bids for the contract. The network links the majority of government sites, from defence installations to local tax offices. It connects over 250,000 users at 1,000 sites across the UK, and handles over 66m calls per year. Up to now, it has been run by the government’s centre for information systems, the Central Computer & Telecommunications Agency. The privatisation will affect only the long-distance element of the network, which is run over lines leased from both British Telecom and Mercury. The Agency will retain management of the metropolitan service, which handles service to the handset in London and other major cities. According to Roddy McKee, in charge of telecommunications policy in the Agency’s Telecommunications Division, the reason for the privatisation is that as UK telecommunications charges have dropped, the Agency is no longer able to run the network economically. He said that the long-distance part of the network has been costing the government around UKP11m per year to run: It has been found by a continued process of review that it is no longer cost-effective for the government to continue running it itself, he said. A British Telecom spokesman said the company hopes to complete preliminary talks with the government shortly. According to McKee, the government expects to award a contract by October, with takeover planned for next April.
