Automatic switching in the United Kingdom: One hundred years of circuit switching?

This last paper of the series goes back to the beginnings of automatic switching in the UK and deals with some of the technical issues being tackled before the war, when the existence of five equipment manufacturers coupled with the need for a standard system led to the Bulk Supplies Agreement. This agreement had serious long-term consequences, which were made all the more serious by the failure to develop an electronically controlled crossbar system immediately after the war. The consequences persisted into the 1980s, when the belated restructuring of the manufacturing industry, coupled with privatisation, competition and globalisation, meant that, among other things, BT would forego its leadership role in systems research and development. And now, the increasing use of packet switching for broadband services suggests that the end of automatic circuit switching may be no more than a decade or so away, after a history of some 100 years.