I am now retired, but the core of my career was working as a national official for the main telecommunications trade union in the UK which is now called the Communication Workers Union (CWU). In 1980, I used my Fellowship to spend five weeks in the USA studying their telecommunications system. In the USA, telecoms has always been privately owned and at that time there was much discussion of the possible privatisation of British Telecom. Also, in recent years, the USA had opened up competition in the provision of both telecommunications networks and terminal apparatus and again these were changes being mooted in the UK.

As a result of my Fellowship, I was able to write a detailed report for union members on the impact of privatisation and competition in the telecommunications sector. Over the following 20 years, much of the US experience was replicated in the UK, so the information and insights in my Report were very relevant.

When I left the CWU, I did a lot of work with Ofcom (the UK's communications regulator) on the Communications Consumer Panel and the Consumer Forum for Communications, where the work from my Fellowship continued to be useful.