Telephone Service Vehicles

The 20th Century witnessed one of the great revolutions in mass communication with the development of the telephone. To achieve this transformation, a vast network of cables and wires together with a great variety and number of road vehicles to construct and then maintain the system were required. From the GPO and British Telecom to the now-privatised BT, the vehicles used in the construction and maintenance of the telephone and more recent fibre optic network have been, and remain, a familiar sight on the nation's roads. Bill Aldridge examines over 100 years of the history of the telephone service and the great variety of vehicles, from the humble Morris Minor to the high tech vehicles of today that the industry has employed.