Cable & Wireless Worldwide

Cable & Wireless Worldwide

Cable & Wireless Worldwide PLC (informally Cable & Wireless) is a British multinational telecommunications services company headquartered in Bracknell, United Kingdom and a wholly owned subsidiary of Vodafone. It specialises in servicing large corporates, governments, carriers and resellers and its services include managed voice, data and IP based services. It has operations in Asia Pacific, Europe, India, the Middle East & Africa and North America. It was formed in 2010 through the split of Cable & Wireless plc into two companies, the other being Cable & Wireless Communications.

The origins of Cable and Wireless lie in a number of British telegraph companies founded in the 1860s. In 1928 the communications operations of the British Empire were merged into a single company, initially known as Imperial and International Communications Ltd, which became Cable and Wireless Limited in 1934. In the mid-1980s, it became the first company in the UK to offer an alternative telephone service to British Telecom (via subsidiary Mercury Communications, merged into C&W in 1997). The company later offered cable TV to its customers, but sold its cable assets to NTL in 2000. Cable & Wireless Worldwide was acquired by Vodafone in July 2012, with its shares being de-listed from the London Stock Exchange.