Rediffusion: did they operate a telephone service in UK?

On my wanders I encountered a roadside jointing post marked only REDIFFUSION and an embossed serial 18113:

Rediffusion post

From what I know of the town of Newtownards there has never been an active cable TV service though CableTel, as a distant relation of Rediffusion, did lay some fibre in the late 1990s which has remained dark.

So why would there be such a jointing post? I have not yet found any companions.

Perhaps it is a GPO / PO post with a conveniently handy cover...

Yours quizzingly,

Rediffusion provided cable TV in the 80's and 90's, it was delivered from posts rather than underground.

They were very big in radio and TV distribution:

http://www.rediffusion.info/cablestory.html

Shows the timelines. Lots more info on the web

John

Round this way (Reading), some of the old victorian terraces have a defunct communal aerial service, which I believe was Rediffusion stuff. No help I know, but it is general chatter.

I used to work for Rediffusion Engineering, their R&D arm, from 1981 to 1985. They had various different cable TV systems, TV manufacturing, TV rental and sales shops etc. but no telephone systems. They also used to have the London ITV franchise. Some cable TV used twisted pair and others coax.

PeteB (On smartphone, can't remember login details)

Thanks everyone! That was another interesting little journey into history.

Apparently there was a Rediffusion shop on High Street in the town until at least the late 1970s, perhaps that was the rental arm of the empire.

We had Redifusion cable TV that was on a multi-pair cable there was a selector box on the wall that used a rotary switch to select the channel by simply switching the pairs.

Back in the early 1970's we lived in Co Durham, near Newton Aycliffe, and had the Rediffusion cable system.

A rotary dial on a wall near the window, where the wire came in, connected to the TV. It also had radio channels, and they blanked the TV screen. The TV's were supplied by them too as they were 'cabled' to their system

Really annoying when you are watching something and younger brother reaches through the window to turn the knob...

It seems to me that Bristol had a rediffusion network back in the 50's or 60's - not clear, as I was away from home during quite a bit of that time.
They used to connect up from house to house, so you didn't get a lot of distribution poles.

In reply to a post by Northwind:

Thanks everyone! That was another interesting little journey into history.

Apparently there was a Rediffusion shop on High Street in the town until at least the late 1970s, perhaps that was the rental arm of the empire.

Yes that would have been the case The shops were TV rental our local one also sold Cassette tapes and 45rpm singles for a while (top 30 only), and in some areas payment points Cable supply. In West Wales they provided reception in poor reception areas where the signal was taken and cabled around towns requiring a UHF/VHF converter in the signal feed to the Tv set (often a "Pye Televerter" branded unit), Initially only the 3 terrestrial channels were available, but later on a very limited number of channels were available due to the technical limtations of sytem a system that was initially on designed to carry 3 terrestrial channels. Rediffusion sold the cable operation to Maxwell communications, and I know NTL were involved in its final days.

The cost for a few channels was comparable to a Sky package offering 4 times as many channels and coupled with a poor quality picture and reliabilty issues Customers were deserting in droves, the hardware was failing and connecting customers/repairing faults was reliant on scavenging hardware from defunct connections where costomers had left, and finally NTL announced that (despite promises of coming refurbishment and investment) they were cllosing the network leaving a lot of thier customers scrambling to install Sky or erect aerials for reception from a "repeater" station that was now available.