Sir Brian Carsberg, director general of the UK Office of Telecommunications, has granted permission for three more cable television companies to provide telephony services in parts of their franchise areas. The three companies are East London Telecommunications Ltd, Cable Camden and United Artists International. Cable Telecom has been providing telephony services for over a year through the renting of 1,400 lines to Mercury. Of the new licences, the first two cover London’s Docklands and part of North London, while the third covers business centres in Croydon and Sutton. Altogether, the areas include 26,000 businesses and 64,000 homes. For East London and Camden, the permission represents an extension of existing facilities to a larger number of customers. Both already rent out lines to Mercury, which claims that the quality is better than on the lines it rents from British Telecom. Mercury has plans to expand its local network by linking with five other cable companies by the end of 1991: it currently has deals with four. In the same report, four other cable operators have been ordered by Sir Brian to remedy the delays in the building of their networks – they are Coventry Cable Ltd, Clydebank Cablevision Ltd, British Cable Services, in Guildford, and Westminster Cable Ltd.
