Cable & Wireless Plc’s Mercury Communications Ltd seems to have broken the logjam with its latest round of price reductions – it boasts that while for British Telecommunications Plc customers some prices are going up, prices are going down for all Mercury customers – and the company has this week reportedly won two major contracts, with London Transport, where it won the UKP500,000 business by allocating the full set of numbers on the 227 code to London Transport, and with Marks & Spencer Plc, which has signed a UKP1.2m agreement for Mercury to run an internal telephone network linking its stores UK-wide to the headquarters in Baker Street, London W. British Telecom is already planning to cut 11,000 jobs by next April, and there are worries that intensified competition from Mercury will trigger further efficiency measures and more cuts.
