The Government Telephone Preference Scheme (GTPS) was a British system for limiting outgoing calls from

landline A landline (land line, land-line, main line, home phone, fixed-line, and wireline) is a telephone connection that uses metal wires or optical fiber telephone line for transmission, as distinguished from a mobile cellular network, which uses ...

s if the

network Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...

was overloaded during an emergency. Numbers registered under the GTPS were still be able to make outgoing calls if the service was limited. All telephones were still be able to receive calls. The scheme was decommissioned in 2017. There were three categories of use – the most essential were called Preference Category I, limited to 2% of lines of a telephone exchange. According to a British government document, they were intended to be limited to "lines vital to the prosecution of war and to national survival". The second category – Preference Category II – were for lines needed for the community and these and Preference Category II were limited in total to 10% of the exchange. All other users were in Category III. The scheme was established in the 1950s. The scheme ceased to accept new numbers from 2013 due to the replacement by service providers of the infrastructure over which the scheme operated. The scheme was decommissioned in 2017. Phones on the scheme included armed forces headquarters, local authority emergency planning centres, emergency services such as police, fire and ambulance and public telephone boxes. Since 1992 the

United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation The United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation (UKWMO) was a British civilian organisation operating to provide UK military and civilian authorities with data on nuclear explosions and forecasts of fallout across the country in the event ...

and

Royal Observer Corps The Royal Observer Corps (ROC) was a civil defence organisation intended for the visual detection, identification, tracking and reporting of aircraft over Great Britain. It operated in the United Kingdom between 29 October 1925 and 31 December ...

operational lines have been deleted from the scheme. A similar scheme limiting

mobile telephone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...

access is called

MTPAS MTPAS (Mobile Telecommunication Privileged Access Scheme) is a British procedure for prioritising access to the mobile telephone networks for privileged persons (members of emergency services as designated at a local level). It replaced ACCOLC in ...

(formerly

ACCOLC ACCOLC (Access Overload Control) was a procedure in the United Kingdom for restricting mobile telephone usage in the event of emergencies. It is similar to the GTPS (Government Telephone Preference Scheme) for landlines. This scheme allowed the ...

References

{{reflist Emergency management in the United Kingdom History of telecommunications in the United Kingdom

See also

References