It has all gone quiet again on the UK telecommunications approvals front, but If AT&T Co’s application for a licence is finally granted, it may be that the company hurt most will be not the massively profitable British Telecommunications Plc but Mercury Communications Ltd. Mercury’s approach has always been to target the business customer – the market that AT&T would (at least initially) be going after. In anticipation of the AT&T move, Mercury has been bringing down all of its international prices – its charges to the US have dropped by 38% over the last two years and are now 21% cheaper to the US than those of the cheapest US carrier, Sprint Corp – and has also been expanding into the small business and residential market and preparing new services. Mercury claims that it now covers 90% of the UK population and its residential subscriber base is growing fast: it says it now serves over half a million residential customers – a figure that it says is now growing at 30,000 a month – the rate has risen from 25,000 a month just a few weeks ago. The 500,000-plus figure is double what it was this time last year, and the Cable & Wireless Plc company reckons it now has 10% of the UK telecommunications market, up from 8.4% last year.
