The problem with a state-owned telecommunications network was that it was hostage to national fortunes. Britain ended the Second World War virtually bankrupt. There was little money in the public coffers to pay for post-war reconstruction - and almost none to spend on growing the telephone network.
Although Treasury spending limits had had a minor impact on growth since the government took over the telegraph in 1870, this serious restriction would visibly hold back the development of British telecommunications for the next 35 years.
In 1964 the new Prime Minister Harold Wilson was talking about a new Britain being forged in 'the white heat of technology'. The reality was less glamorous - one business in every ten was still having to make do with a shared telephone line.
By the late 1960s, everyone wanted telephones - partly because rising living standards had made them more affordable, partly because families had become dispersed, and partly to 'keep up with the Joneses' - but mostly because the telephone was increasingly seen as an essential tool of everyday life.
The Post Office was changing too - the signs were all around from the microwave towers dotting the landscape, to the huge dishes at Goonhilly and the awesome Post Office Tower soaring over London.
By the end of decade, the Post Office had nearly caught up with demand and increasingly was able to supply telephones to order.
The 1970s began with high hopes for British telecommunications. The technologies of satellite communications, UHF colour TV, digital telephone switching and data networking had all been proved. The Post Office was in the vanguard of up and coming technologies such as fibre optics - pointing the way to ultra high-speed communications.
But from there, things just seemed to get worse. In common with the rest of Britain, the Post Office became beset by a creeping paralysis of bad industrial relations and disputes.
As Britain's economic malaise deepened, spending restrictions on the nationalised industries tightened.
The change to public corporations hadn't made the Post Office much better off. As one of Britain's few growth industries, Post Office Telecommunications was a prime national asset with its revenues used to reduce the public borrowing requirement. The dearth of investment funding led to an 18-month waiting list for telephones, and more faults as exchanges suffered maintenance backlogs.
Bill Philips, a retired lecturer, was born in 1924 and grew up partly in Weymouth on the South Coast and partly in London.
Despite travelling between the two towns, he and his family never used the phone until he was 15 years old, although the family did use telegrams for urgent news.
He made his first phone calls to arrange meetings with his girlfriend at his aunt's house but soon realised the value of the public phone, before eventually having one installed at his home in the early 1950s.
Play the audio clip and view the transcript to learn more. A new window will open.John Graham, born in 1932 was introduced to the phone at an early age. His family had a candlestick phone on the hall table at home, for his job as a Fleet Street journalist, but he was forbidden to touch it at first.
Following a schoolboy fascination with electronics, he became a TV and radio engineer.
When he had his first phone installed himself, he remembers that he was able to jump the waiting list because his wife was pregnant. Their new conncection was a party line, although sharing the phone could be an annoying experience.
Play the audio clip and view the transcript to learn more. A new window will open.