Cable & Wireless plc

Cable & Wireless plc was a British telecommunications company.

The firm could trace its origins back to 1869 and the business interests of Sir John Pender, who (via the merger of three separate telegraph companies) became the first chairman of the newly-created Eastern Telegraph Company' in 1872. The firm expanded largely through acquisitions of other telegraph companies, operating 22,400 miles by 1887. The company's cable services were heavily used during the First World War, and the cables themselves became targets of warfare in themselves for the first time. The interwar period saw rising competition from radio communications, such as Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company, thus the communications methods of the British Empire were merged into one operating company in 1928 to create the Imperial and International Communications Ltd; six years later, it was renamed as Cable and Wireless Limited. In 1947, Cable and Wireless was nationalised by the British government and its UK-based assets were integrated with those of the General Post Office.

During 1981, the company was privatised. During the mid-1980s, Cable & Wireless became the first company in the UK to offer an alternative telephone service to British Telecom (via subsidiary Mercury Communications). The company later offered cable TV to its customers, but it sold its cable assets to NTL (now Virgin Media) in 2000. It remained a significant player in the UK telecoms market and in certain overseas markets, especially in the former British colonies of the Caribbean, where it was formerly the monopoly incumbent. It was also the main supplier of communication in the British South Atlantic, including Saint Helena and the Falkland Islands. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.

The company split in March 2010, with its international division demerging to form Cable & Wireless Communications, acquired by Liberty Global in 2015, and since spun-off in 2018 from Liberty Global to Liberty Latin America, while the remainder of the Cable & Wireless business became Cable & Wireless Worldwide and was acquired by Vodafone in 2012.