Four things you never knew about Cable & Wireless



Chapter 11
In December 2003, Cable & Wireless decided to sell its money-losing US operations to a Los Angeles investment firm for an announced price of $125 million. The deal included a Chapter 11 filing for the American unit (which was a separate corporate entity from the British parent company. At the board meeting at which this decision was taken, every single board member had at least one lawyer, sitting beside them in the meeting, advising them on every word they said.

Football
Cable & Wireless introduced football to Portugal in 1876 when the staff of the local Cable & Wireless Cable Station at Carcavelos (http://www.portugaltravelguide.com/en/carcavelos.htm) showed the locals how to play the beautiful game. Brothers Edward, William and Frederick Pinto-Basto formed the backbone of a team that local Portuguese teams all aspired to beat at the local ground, Quinta Nova.

YouTube
In April 2009 Cable & Wireless was part of a consortium that signed a turnkey contract valued at several hundred million US dollars to deploy a new submarine cable network to provide the first direct connection between Southern Africa and Europe ( http://vartips.com/telecom-equipment/alcatel-lucent/alcatel-lucent-wacs-submarine-cable-network-462.html#ixzz1pmwB4bNX ). The West Africa Cable System (WACS) comprised a 14,000 km-long submarine network system to bolster Internet and other communications capabilities to and from the African continent.
Over 90% of the capacity of the then new submarine cable between Portugal and Africa was not taken by banks and financial services, as might have been expected, but pre-bought by Google to meet African demand for YouTube.

Beat that!
During a long and distinguished Cable & Wireless career one highly respected Cable & Wireless, F1 Staff manager played against Manchester United FC, The West Indies cricket team and had a contract personally reviewed and approved by Vladimir Putin. Quite a CV!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Apple Apps: build your own - it's not difficult!

Image
Building an Apple App used to cost a fortune – usually via an Elance contractor in India, the Ukraine or China. I did one this way, called iSmashit, and I haven’t got my investment back yet!    Apple ? Then I had a crack at doing it myself: I already had an AppStore account (courtesy of iSmashit ) and so I got an Apple Developer Licence and downloaded Xcode onto to my Apple (you need Lion OS for it by the way). I made pretty good progress, largely due to the excellent courses at Lynda.com. But I still ain’t no Angry Birds builder! Bloggers with vastly more experience than me, such as JohnChow (in my view, simply the best), have recently recommended app building programmes such as bloapp , which create customised apps for bloggers. But now we can go the whole nine yards and build fully-fledged Apple Apps for ourselves, thereby adding to Apple’s existing half million live apps! You could use Conduit - basic but effective. You can do the same thing with M
Read more

The Estate of my great uncle, James Osenton the gold miner: the story continues...

Image
Arawatabaru, Barima River, Guyana It seems the entire estate of my great uncle, James Osenton, gold miner extraordinaire , comprised a single share certificate. After Treasury Solicitors' costs the final amount from the government office is...wait for it...a couple of thousand pounds! To be divided among his descendants. Me and my cousins have decided to put the money towards some kind of memorial to James Osenton - he deserved that at least! Just to take the story further: the dear old BBC, in the form of their Heir Hunters programme , have said that they would like to interview me, which I'm more that happy to do - I might then find out more about James Osenton. In fact I will do more than that: I intend to go out to Guyana, go up the Barima River and try and find out a bit more about my great uncle's gold mine. First hand! Settlements on the Barima River, Guyana A gold nugget, found in the Barima River
Read more