Cable & Wireless (LSE: CW.) is a British telecommunications company. In the mi-1980s, it became the first company in the UK to offer an alternative telephone service to British Telecom (via subsidiary Mercury Communications, merged into C&W in 1997). The company later offered cable TV to its customers, but it sold its cable assets to NTL in 2000. The company re-entered the FTSE 100 Index in December 2006., after relegation from it to the FTSE 250 Index in June 2006.