Categories
Business internet

Digital Britain Summit

At this morning’s Digital Britain Summit in London BT Chief Executive Ian Livingstone argued that there is not enough demand for fibre to the home to justify the cost of rolling it out universally.  He is quoted as saying “Of course a Ferrari is faster than a Ford, but most people are happy with a Ford.”

It has to be said that this is in huge contrast to his predecessor Ben Verwaayen who took the bold move of investing in a countrywide rollout of ADSL despite the apparent lack of a business case for it. The upshot of that move is the highly competitive broadband market we have today.

Of  course, in Ian Livingstone’s defence, the costs are likely to be somewhat different for a fibre network roll out that that of ADSL.  However it is highly blinkered to have made that statement.  The applications and the uses will come.  When they built the M25 around London the need for additional lanes was not anticipated but the traffic came…

I think the Government needs to bit the bullet here and make the investment in fibre to areas of the country that don’t otherwise fit with BT/NTL’s ROI requirements.  They should make this network available to all on a wholesale basis.  It will assist with the economic recovery and provide the country with a serious, strategic capability in next generation technology.

What’s more, whilst the Digital Britain report talks about a Universal Service Obligation of 2Mbps to every household in the UK I think this is very shortsighted.  We should be thinking of 1Gbps.

As a footnote to this post I’d like to comment on the very short notice (only 2 – 3 days) provided to attendees for today’s meeting. I’m not a naturally suspicious bloke but I wonder whether there was a hidden reason for this.

My thanks to Chris Williams from The Register for the article about this