A blogger’s prerogative

One of the joys of blogging is that there’s nothing to stop you occasionally changing your mind.  Or perhaps more accurately, there’s the chance now and then to reassess some throwaway remarks of the past.  During an enforced lull in new writing, I’ve had the opportunity to review some older posts, and I’d like to offer a couple of retractions.

First, I recently teased my good friends at Virgin Media for inadvertently adopting a ‘little Britain’ policy position – specifically, in their attitude towards the vexed topic of net neutrality.  Secondly, I extended some real sympathy towards Ed Richards for the rigour of his grilling by the Public Accounts Committee.  On reflection, I would now like to recant both these positions.

My change of heart stems from a growing concern that there is something fundamentally flawed in our current approach to the development of competition in the communications sector.  Now, this is a BIG topic, and one that I’ll have to revisit, but let me begin by explaining why I slightly regret those two earlier posts.

There was a time when the UK telecoms regulator was an offshoot of the old Department of Trade & Industry.  In his ‘end of term report’, the DG was required to set out not only what he’d done and why, but also how his actions had enhanced the national cause – in terms of making the UK a better place to do business, encouraging inward investment and so on.  To be sure, there were a lot of shortcomings in that regime but it was at least oriented towards outcomes, towards delivering tangible results for UK plc.  The situation today is rather different.  Ofcom is undoubtedly a more sophisticated (and better resourced) regulator than any of its predecessors.  Its outputs and decision-making are altogether more professional, and it regularly tops the EU league tables for regulatory performance.  And yet, it seems remarkably difficult to find evidence of real – sustainable - industry development.  Ofcom has dined out on its success in the implementation of local loop unbundling but, in the transition to next generation broadband, the fruits of that success may be short-lived.  And, as I've pointed out before, there are increasing signs that the UK’s communications infrastructure is falling well behind international standards. 

Reading again the PAC's report on Ofcom's effectiveness, I’m inclined to feel less sympathetic towards Ed Richards for his interrogation by the Committee.  In fact, I think their report gets it absolutely right: “Ofcom publishes a lot of information about consumer outcomes, but acknowledges that it needs to do more to define the specific results its work is attempting to achieve. Ofcom should set out in its Annual Plan what outcomes it intends to deliver, expressed in a clearly defined and measurable way, and indicating in advance what success will look like”.

Mea culpa!