Back home, Mercury has appointed a first distributor for its 2200 phone service for business customers, Vanderhoff Ltd: the contract with Vanderhoff represents a marketing departure for Mercury because until now it has always dealt directly with customers but Mercury claims that demand for its service outstrips its capacity to install equipment, and although it has only 400 2200 customers, growth will be big in the future; the 2200 service offers a ‘smart box’ re-routing mechanism that sits between a customers’s PABX and British Telecom’s exchange to redirect calls to Mercury’s fibre optic network where possible, and the company has been installing the Vanderhoff-designed ‘smart boxes’, which are based on Intel microprocessors, and also automate the dialling process so that the user does not have to dial any extra digits in switching from Telecom’s loop disconnect signalling to Mercury’s Dual Tone Multi Frequency system; Mercury also plans to launch all its services in Scotland in the Autumn including its 2300 domestic user service.