The end of the Second World War saw the renegotiation of the governance of global telecommunications. The dominant incumbent, the British Imperial (later Commonwealth) network centred on the Cable and Wireless company, experienced multiple changes: the tightly integrated and collaborative imperial governance system fell away as the governing partners (notably Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK) increasingly pursued their own, rather than a collective agendas; Cable and Wireless’ historical monopoly began to give way to a competition and interconnection based regime as American firms and their networks demanded interconnection with the Imperial "legacy" network; and Cable and Wireless was nationalised. Though key elements of the Bermuda Agreement sealed at the Bermuda Conference of 1945 were soon to be renegotiated, the Conference, at which the old global hegemony, centred on the UK and its partners, negotiated a new global communications order to accommodate the new global hegemonic power, the USA, was the fulcrum event of these transitions. Drawing on primary archival sources (notably in Canada and the UK) the author tells of the tensions within the fragmenting Imperial partnership, of the mix of interest and idealism motivating the Americans, of the representative character of this liberalisation of telecommunications which foreshadowed issues seen later in the telecommunication liberalisations beginning in the 1980s, and of the durability of the Imperial connections as manifested in the successful negotiating partnership of the Empire/Commonwealth parties when encountering the United States of America.