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Local telephone service first started in Barbados by The Barbados Telephone Company Ltd., a private company, in 1884, 9 years after Alexander Graham Bell exhibited his invention at the Philadelphia Centenial Exposition. Telephone service at that time was restricted to calls made within the island.
From as early as 1851, however, Barbadians first heard of plans for submarine cables to be laid linking North and South America , through the English and Danish West Indies. However, it was not until 1869 that a British company, the West India and Panama Company, started construction of submarine cables to link Barbados, through Jamaica , to the USA .
Local telephone service was established in Barbados only nine (9) years after Alexander Graham Bell had exhibited the first telephone at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.
In 1872, the West India and Panama Company completed the laying of cables linking Florida and Cuba to St. Kitts, Antigua , Guadeloupe , Dominica , Martinique , St. Lucia , St. Vincent , Barbados , Grenada , Trinidad and Guiana. The Barbados Telegraph service opened on March 7, 1872. Between 1879 and 1924 a series of cable landings made Barbados into the convergence point for cables connecting the West Indies to the American continent.
Following news of a breakthrough in wireless telegraphic communication, Barbados established a wireless station in 1914. The advent of wireless telegraphy and telephony caused a crisis for the cable companies, which the British Government solved in 1929 by merging the wireless and cable companies. This merger was christened ‘Cable & Wireless” in 1934.
Meanwhile, in Barbados , the government, through the Cable & Wireless ( West Indies ) Limited Act of 1939, consolidated all previous legislation relating to the duties and privileges of the Panama Telegraph company, which operated in the island at the time, and its parent company, Cable & Wireless. In those days, the company was required to "publish free of charge ... any news of importance or of interest in the line of route of the cable in the West Indies, and also the ruling market process of that day in London and New York."
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