Telecommunications and the Law

Abstract

Telecommunications has, in commercial terms, come to encompass the transmission of messages not simply through voice telephony, but also telex, electronic mail, facsimile and data transmission. Legislation in the UK (the Telecommunications Act 1984) provides its own definition of ‘telecommunication system’, which is a system for the ‘conveyance’, through various forms of energy, of:

• a) speech, music and other sounds;

• b) visual images;

• c) signals serving for the impartation … of any matter otherwise than in the form of sounds or visual images;

• d) signals serving for the actuation or control of machinery or apparatus.