That’s interesting John thanks for sharing. I never worked for BT but I did work for Mercury and I maintained radio links across the north east and Cumbria. We had Siemens 140Mbps and NEC 34MBps for long/medium haul trunk network and also used 2Mbps extensively for customer connections, using DMC, Ferranti and others.
Believe it or not there were still Siemens radios operational until a few years ago and I know of NECs that we’re never switched of for over 20 years and had no faults.
Mostly replaced by fibre now but microwave is still used where access is a problem or resilience is required, the radios are now 10Mbps.
There’s not much on Mercury radio but it does get a mention here:
http://www.cumbria-industries.org.uk...ommunications/
It’s not just BT who relied on microwave radio connections to and via Cumbria. In 1981 Mercury Communications was formed as a subsidiary of Cable and Wireless to challenge BT in the provision of national telecommunications services. Mercury communications established a national network based on Siemens 140Mbps (Mega Bits Per Second) microwave radio equipment. The system required several relays in Cumbria, these were known as Scout Hill radio site and Grey Rigg radio site. These two locations enabled connectivity from Manchester to Scotland and also provided services for customers in the area.
John