Video script

Client: G&T Ltd, Belsize Park, London, for Cable&Wireless Ltd

Audience: Cable&Wireless stockholders - all ages and income brackets

Brief: Sell the idea that Cable&Wireless is going to make investors a lot of money helping businesses around the world, around the clock

THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Voice-over:

Telecommunications ... around the world ... twenty-four hours a day.

Cable&Wireless has a vision ... a vision of a future where every major business centre is linked by a global telephone network ... a digital network.

And that vision is getting closer to reality every minute of every day.

Connection is the key.

Not only for businesses but also for private customers, so wherever you are, you're connected to the heart of a world-wide telephone network ... in your office, away from it, or even on the move.

For the past seven years, Cable&Wireless have been putting together the digital communications jigsaw all over the world …

… and now the pieces are nearly in place.

In Britain, we have Mercury Communications, the first independent national telephone network in Europe.

Bringing Europe and the Americas together, Cable&Wireless ships have been laying an undersea cable across the Atlantic.

It doesn't just stop on the East Coast of the USA - it links into the SPRINT digital network that covers the whole of the American continent.

And it's a phone cable with a difference - the very first one to carry optical transmission signals.

This transatlantic link will start operations later this year, but in years to come, when optical communications are commonplace, we know that just one cable isn't going to be enough.

On the West Coast of the USA, another optical cable is working its way across the Pacific, linking SPRINT with the Japanese International Digital Network.

Every piece of this global network is being placed in position, linking with other national networks, and already our customers here in Europe, in America and in Japan are beginning to have more communications power than they ever dreamt possible.

For example - this Cable&Wireless mobile phone was designed for use in Japan. With a few simple modifications, it can link into the British network …

… through the American network …

… and back to Tokyo.

So getting urgent information from one side of the world to the other is as simple as making a local phone call.

And because this global network is digital, computers can transmit and receive binary data - anything from financial reports to engineering designs.

If you don't have your own personal phone and you're using somebody else's, all you have to do is key in your identification code and any calls you make are billed to your own number back home.

And when it comes to billing, calls are itemised so you can keep accurate records …

… and the charges are automatically converted to your own currency.

This is the future we see at Cable&Wireless - but what you've just seen is only a small part of it.

Time and distance used to be communications problems, but not any more.

People have to get away from it all, for whatever reason, but being out of sight needn't mean being out of touch.

Like the global network, the music business has spread around the world.

The Caribbean …

… mellow, relaxed, and where better to record this kind of laid-back music?

Business and pleasure …

… the Cable&Wireless Boatphone system makes the most of both - and it's digital.

Digital also means that video signals can travel around the world.

Time is money.

If you've ever bought a computer in a high street shop, did you ever stop and think about how it got there?

First, the computer manufacturer needs financial backing.

The money comes from investors in Japan, North America and Germany, through a New York-based American bank …

… and settles in the London Money Markets.

British designers look for the most cost-effective components and decide on ones produced in Hong Kong, Japan and elsewhere in the Far East.

Each component needs to be manufactured, packed and then shipped to the UK where they're assembled.

Meanwhile, company lawyers fax draft agreements to each other …

… the components are ordered by telex …

… and the phones never stop ringing.
We at Cable&Wireless are doing the same thing - not just with computers, but with the whole business world, finding the right components, assembling them, and linking them up so each part of the global network can communicate with any other part - instantly.

The world market is fast becoming a single market place, and to make that market work, communication is the key.

Businessmen need to talk to each other, computers need to swap data, twenty-four hours a day, from one side of the world to the other and that's why Cable&Wireless is committed to better communication.

END