Broadband Britain – A Decades-Old Joke

Broadband Britain has always been a bit of a joke. Nearly 20 years ago Hermann Hauser tore the government off a strip for its tardiness in rolling out broadband and and things are no better today.

This is what Hauser said in November 2001:

‘THE GOVERNMENT was bitterly attacked at the Annual Electronics Executive Forum in Maidenhead last week when entrepreneur and venture capitalist Hermann Hauser slammed ministers for failing to implement their promise of broadband Britain.

“It’s a total scandal that the Government has allowed BT to abuse its monopoly in such an overt fashion,”Hauser told the meeting. The Government had promised to make the UK number one in broadband.

“If you look at the broadband roll-out in Europe,”scoffed Hauser,”at the bottom you’ve got Greece and Portugal with zero per cent and then you’ve got the UK with 0.2 per cent and everyone else with one or two per cent.”

Meanwhile telecoms regulator Oftel and BT came under fire on the same subject this week from Ebone,one of the companies hoping to make use of local loop unbundling.

In an open letter to Oftel, Ebone’s chief executive Duncan Lewis said:

“The local loop unbundling process…has been a fiasco-30 operators have pulled out of the process, many going bankrupt.”

A spokesman for Oftel replied:”It’s not just this one element that broadband Britain relies upon.”

Lewis told Oftel’s director general David Edmonds: “The future of Broadband Britain lies in your hands.Unless you act now,you will share the blame for the UK becoming the broad- band’sick man of Europe’.”

Oftel said it was about to issue a directive that would help clear the dispute between BT and operators such as Ebone.

Later this week the e-minis- ter,Douglas Alexander,will give his formal response to a report on broadband Britain from the Government’s expert panel,published in September.

The report said the Government should improve broad-band access to schools and the public sector,provide cash to develop content,encourage e- commerce adoption,and help fund the infrastructure.