Location: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2100228,00.html
Government hopes ex-gas regulator can kick-start Broadband Britain
Graeme Wearden
Clare Spottiswoode, formerly the UK gas industry regulator, has been
asked by the Treasury to advise how the take-up of broadband Internet
services in the UK can be increased.
The move has been reported as a vote of no confidence in David Edmonds --
head of telecoms regulator Oftel -- who in the past has been criticised
for not pushing BT hard enough to open its network up to other operators.
Spottiswoode, who played a key role in the break-up of British Gas and
the creation of a more competitive energy market, will present a seminar
to Treasury officials in the next few weeks. She is expected to recommend
that the supply of telecommunications services should be fully separated
from the business of infrastructure management.
According to The Sunday Times, Spottiswoode has already spoken to the
Prime Minister's officials about broadband, amid concerns that Britain is
falling behind other nations in the availability and take-up of
affordable high-speed Internet connections.
She told the paper that one reason that Britain is falling behind in
broadband is a lack of effective regulation. "You could see back in 1993
that if you applied exactly the same thought process as in gas, BT
wouldn't be in the situation it is now. We'd have much more broadband and
we'd be ahead of the world in our telecoms industry -- and we're not,"
Spottiswoode said. "To me that's to do with the regulator not getting to
grips with what needs to be done to change the structure of the industry
to make it work more effectively," she added.
A recent report found that Sweden, Denmark, Germany, France, Spain and
Norway all have a much greater percentage of their Net-connected
households using broadband than the UK.
Much of the disappointment and anger felt about Britain's woeful position
in the broadband league comes from the failure, so far, of local-loop
unbundling (LLU). LLU is an attempt to increase broadband competition by
allowing other operators to install their own equipment in local
exchanges and compete with the incumbent telco.
In the UK, very few phone lines have been unbundled so far and many of
the companies that initially showed an interest have now dropped out.
Some have accused BT of being deliberately unhelpful in an attempt to
protect its market share -- a charge that BT has denied.
BT points out that it has spent millions of pounds on LLU only to find
that the earlier demand has now largely disappeared -- which it
attributes to the slump in the telecoms market that has made it much
harder for operators to find investors willing to loan them money.
Later on Monday the government will publish the full report it has
received from its Broadband Stakeholder Group. This group is expected to
call for a significant reduction in the cost of ADSL services.
According to the government's e-Envoy, the chancellor, Gordon Brown, is
unconvinced that there is significant demand for broadband services.
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