Posts and Telecommunications Division

The Posts and Telecommunications Division was responsible for sponsorship of the Post Office's postal and Giro remittance service businesses, sponsorship of the Post Office's telecommunications and data processing business both inland and overseas, government policy aspects of the international postal and telecommunications relations, satellite telecommunications, Government/Post Office/ Cable and Wireless constitutional relationships, coordination of departmental policy towards nationalised industries, the liberalisation of the telecommunications network and legislation to separate telecommunications from the Post Office.

Registered files of the Post Office Review Committee are in PV 2.

Files relating to Government/Post Office relations are in PV 7; the liberalisation of the telecommunications network in PV 8; the financial aspects of the British Telecom privatisation in PV 16; and industrial relations in the Post Office in PV 17.

Topics

Labour

Radio and television

Computing

Communications

When the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications was dissolved in 1974 responsibility for the posts and telecommunications functions passed to the Department of Industry.

The Posts and Telecommunications Division was established to carry out this work. Initially there were five branches in the Division. Branch 1 was responsible for the sponsorship of Post Office and Giro remittance service businesses (inland), capital investment and long term planning and Post Office Board appointments, Branch 2 was responsible for the sponsorship of the Post Office telecommunications and data processing, Branch 3 was responsible for overseas aspects of the business including policy aspects of international and EC postal and telecommunications relations as well as satellite telecommunications, Branch 4 was concerned with Government/Post office constitutional relationships and the Post Office Review Committee and finally Branch 5 provided economic and statistical analyses.

There were a number of reorganisations within the Division and at the time of its abolition in 1983 there were only three branches, Branch 1 dealing with sponsorship of the postal and Giro services and some international policy aspects, Branch 2 dealing with sponsorship of British Telecommunications (BT) and the policy for nationalised industries and Branch 3 dealing with the remainder of the international policy aspects, relations with Cable and Wireless and the liberalisation of the telecomms network.

In 1983 the Division was divided and two new divisions were formed:- the Space and The Post Office Division and the Telecommunications Division. The former continued to be concerned with sponsorship of the Post Office and Girobank as well as space technology and the sponsorship of space and satellite ground station industries. The Telecommunications Division maintained the work on telecommunications liberalisation, nationalised industries policy and sponsorship of BT.