competingina victorian market（competingina维多利亚市场）.docVIP

Competing in the Victorian Market: telecommunication services from their origins to nationalisation (1846-69) In the late 1830s the first electric telegraph models were patented in both Europe and the States, but it was only in the following decade that the first distance telegraph transmissions were started up, mainly with the aim of giving support to the railway lines. The first national telegraph networks were then built in the fifties and the services run directly by the public administration in almost all industrialised countries, with the exception of the States and Great Britain, where private companies carried out the task. In the late fifties the first telegraph cables began to be laid on the seabed, paving the way for the development of an international telegraph network. Great Britain was the first country in which the electric telegraph was patented and then offered as a public service. At the beginning politicians did not grasp how important the development of a communications network would be for the economy of Nation and Empire. So, almost by force of inertia Parliament passed the bill setting up the Electric Telegraph Company, the first to come into existence, but no move was made to create a law regulating the service until 1863. Until then Government and Parliament were totally oblivious to the problems of running a telegraph service, and simply passed the deeds of corporation of the companies entering the market. However, in spite this attitude, which should in theory have favoured free competition, the telegraph service market was not free-flowing, and leant strongly towards an oligopolistic regime, setting up an implicit cartel in the early sixties with a signed agreement over tariffs (1865). At this point, however, the inefficiencies of the service added to the hike in telegram prices set off a revolt by the press and the chambers of commerce, the two main users of the service. A powerful pro-nationalisation campaign ended by putting t