CT Group

CT Group plc, trading as CT, is a Cattalian telecommunications company headquartered in Jennai, Cattala. It is the largest telecommunications services company in Cattala and holds a monopoly over the telephony infrastructure network in the country.

The company became the biggest state-owned business to be privatised in the 1980s, and is now a constituent of the Jennai Stock Exchange. Following privatisation, it expanded into the broadband and mobile telecoms sectors and remains the largest broadband supplier in the country, and holds a 40% stake in the largest mobile supplier, Vestibilé, which it founded in 1990 and sold in 2006.

History
Founded as a Cattalian arm of the Eastern Telegraph Company, led by Sir John Pender, it was sold off in 1928 at the Imperial Wireless & Cable Conference in London. The company became known as Cable and Wireless Cattala, and was one of the first companies occupied by the Italians in the 1940 invasion, before it was used to broadcast propaganda across the islands.

After the end of the Second World War, the company was nationalised and renamed the Cattala Telecommunications Company after it was decided not to merge it with the Post Office. It began to expand rapidly, thanks to its monopoly of Cattala's telecommunications market. Telegraphs, telephony, faxing and latterly satellite technology in Cattala were dominated by Cattala Telecoms and the company was one of the largest nationalised industries in the country in the 1960s and 1970s.

In 1983 the Varmini government announced its intention to privatise the Cattala Telecommunications Company if they won the general election that summer, promising better services and greater investment in Cattala's technology sectors amid market upheaval. Varmini was forced from office in a party coup after narrowly winning the election, and the plans were halted until Lord Varmini reclaimed power in 1986.

The privatisation of what was now known as Cattala Telecoms was the largest in domestic history at the time, and followed in the footsteps of British Telecom several years earlier. 40% of shares were sold to employees of the company, 40% to investors on the open market and 20% remained in government hands. This stake was sold in 2002.

In 1990, Cattala Telecoms founded its first mobile telephony group, known as Vistaphone. A corporate restructuring in 1992 saw the whole company renamed as CT Group, and Vistaphone became CT Wireless. In 2006, CT Wireless was spun off into a new company and merged with Mobilé Cattala, becoming Vestibilé in an $8 billion stock flotation. CT Group retained a 40% stake in Vestibilé.

Broadband
CT Broadband retains a 60% market share in the broadband sector, but continues to hold a monopoly over infrastructure through its Openwide division, an anomaly from the pre-competition era. Its major competitors are Plusnet and NM Group's Cievista division, which is ironically partially owned by state broadcaster RMI, a former nationalised partner of CT.

CT Sphere
CT Group established the country's first fibre-optic, high speed broadband network in 2008, when it announced an agreement with the Office for Media Regulation to roll out <50mb internet access to 90% of the country by 2015. CT Sphere was launched in 2009 as the brand supplying high speed broadband to households and businesses across Cattala. It has become the most profitable and most popular part of the broadband group, supplying over 200,000 customers in 2012, a rise of 60,000 on the previous year.

The underlying network is fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC), which uses optical fibre for all except the final few hundred metres to the consumer, and delivers claimed download speeds of "up to 90 Mbit/s" and upload speeds of "up to 20 Mbit/s" in 90% of areas with Sphere supply.