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Ever the telco policy hound, I’ve been sniffing through the written evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee’s Inquiry into Superfast Broadband – all 381 pages of it.  Predictably (but disappointingly), the leading actors, BT and Virgin Media, chose to concentrate on what a good job they are doing in their respective ways – the panacea of an open access network (BT/Openreach) and a sustained duopoly for Virgin, viz:

“The key objective for Government should be the creation of an environment in which two or more network providers invest and compete aggressively to deliver innovative, high bandwidth broadband products.“

Apart from their support for the status quo, neither of these broadband giants volunteered any particularly new ideas or constructive reforms.  Nonetheless, the evidence does contain some memorable remarks – here are just a few: 

·        There is no direct relationship between availability and take-up of superfast services (Ofcom);

·        The government target of having the best broadband in Europe in 2015 is very challenging, and in our view will be difficult to meet (BSG);

·        BT believes that the Government’s target is capable of being achieved if public funds being made available from BDUK and local authorities are used effectively;

·        In the end the big issue for all the alternative operators is to decide whether the BDUK game is worth the candle (INCA);

·        The Government’s ambition is for Britain to have the best superfast broadband network in Europe by 2015….At the Internet Service Providers’ Association conference on 9^th November delegates were asked if they thought it would actually be achieved. Only one hand went up, and that was the rep from BT (INCA);

·        It is becoming clear…. the scale of the challenge for any provider of scale other than BT to enter the rural broadband market is significant, and that in all likelihood, BT is likely to win the vast majority of public money to upgrade its network in these areas (Virgin);

·        Arqiva is concerned…that there remains a risk that not everyone will get something by 2015; 

·        Research shows that achieving universal coverage of standard broadband provides the greatest return on investment. This is higher than the return for investment in building fibre networks (Talk Talk);

·        The speed of broadband is almost less relevant than the universality of broadband access…. Connect everybody (100% not 90%) and then demand will drive industry investment and innovation to increase the speeds (Wispa);

·        It is regrettable that responsibility for telecoms infrastructure was moved from BIS to DCMS, which is perhaps less tuned in to the needs of the wider UK economy (Geo);

·        We remain unconvinced of the need for obligations to provide “passive” wholesale products such as duct access (KCOM);

·        At the heart of the problem lies the fact that telecoms consumers’ interests have for decades been sacrificed on the ideological altar of infrastructure-based competition (Broadway Partners).

The joy of the internet

Isn’t the internet a wonderful thing?  One of its particular blessings is giving us unprecedented access to the workings of government.  Take, for example, the oral evidence submitted to the inquiry by the House of Lords Select Committee on superfast broadband.  This video evidence is available here. 

The Committee’s findings may or may not influence government policy but there’s no doubting the intellectual value of some of its input.  For instance, I’ve just been listening with interest to the thoughts of Francesco Caio, currently CEO of Avio Group, but formerly of C&W and the author of a 2008 report on barriers to investment in next generation access, Caio makes the important point that another facet of the internet is to separate the roles of service provider and connectivity provider.  As the internet increasingly provides direct access to end services – voice telephony, movies or whatever – the identity of the connectivity provider becomes increasingly irrelevant.  Since this separation idea conflicts with the current model of duopoly competition in the UK – based on the respective bundles of services offered by BT and Virgin Media, we may need to think again about that model of competition.  In particular, we may need to address (again) the concept of last-mile access as a natural monopoly.  So just targeting ‘the best broadband network in Europe’ may not be a sufficient goal for the UK:  Caio believes that policy makers need to set some kind of vision for the long-term aims of the country’s broadband sector.   

All good stuff - and brought to you free by the wonders of the internet…