I suspect most of the telephone / data traffic in the UK is via fibre optic rather than microwave nowadays.
Theres plenty of spare capacity in fibre networks now.
Although i hear microwave links are making a come back due to 'latency' issues with the existing BT SDH backbone network, and some customers demand very fast networks. Especially ones in the financial services industry.
Companies like Arqiva are doing very well in this field.