The UK government organisation known as BABT, was responsible for checking that phone equipment was suitable for the use intended.

And the when it was privatised it became British Telecom’s landline network. It was eventually sold and is now a part of German testing combine Tuv Sud. It is also responsible now for issuing IMEI numbers to handset makers.

Siroda, measured music file download speeds in the UK’s biggest cities during January, it also calculated how long it actually took to call up a web page. For Music downloads 02 provided the fastest speed in 12 cities.

Vodafone were second, scoring top in five locations.
T Mobile won in two locations, and Orange never led the rest. Although it did do better in web page loading, actually coming top in four cities. Source – reghardware.co.uk