The Great Western did it first in the 1830s... "In 1839 the world’s first commercial telegraph line using the Cooke and Wheatstone five-needle system was commi

The Great Western did it first in the 1830s... "In 1839 the world’s first commercial telegraph line using the Cooke and Wheatstone five-needle system was commissioned by the Great Western Railway and built between Paddington and West Drayton, a distance of 13 miles." And later: "British Rail Telecommunications was created by British Rail (BR). It was the largest private telecoms network in Britain, consisting of 17,000 route kilometres of fibre optic and copper cable which connected every major city and town in the country and provided links to continental Europe through the Channel Tunnel.[1]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Telecommunications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Telecommunication...