Recently returned from
holiday, I was eager to take a look at the findings from the inquiry by the House of Lords Select
Committee on superfast broadband. The report's
67 pages contain a lot of
material for discussion but here’s a first, rather sweeping impression…
Douglas Adams wrote that the
answer to the meaning of life, the universe, and everything was 42. In similar gnomic fashion, the members of
the ‘Lords
Communications Committee appear to have concluded that, in the realm of
broadband, the answer is either ‘dark fibre’ or ‘middle mile’ or possibly
both. If you listen to much of the oral
evidence from the ‘Lords Inquiry (and I have), it’s striking how often the
peers shoe-horned these two concepts into the discussion – even where they
weren’t entirely relevant. Indeed,
members of the Committee admitted that they weren’t altogether sure about the
meaning of the two terms or why they might be of such significance issues but
it was as if an ancient sage had whispered to them mysteriously that the
concepts would somehow unlock the solution to delivering the best broadband network in Europe. As a result, the Committee’s ‘alternative
vision’ for a broadband strategy has been fashioned around the twin pillars of
wholesale access to dark fibre and the provision of backhaul. While there’s undoubtedly merit in exploring
both issues, their dominance in the construction has perhaps been at the
expense of other, more mundane considerations – for example, the role of
wireless in rural areas and the affordability of a fibre-only solution. That’s soothsayers for you!
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