All Bets Are Off

There is an absolutely cracking article on BT's BET (broadband enabling technology) reported in Trefor Davies' blog. Tref is the Chief Technology Officer of ISP Timico - a genuinely nice guy with the breadth of vision to see where broadband in the UK could go, where it should go and how it has to go if the country is to derive any real benefit from the global digital economy.

I mentioned BET in a post last November, when BT had scored something of an own goal after they had installed BET in the exchange at Hambleden, Oxon, but only for the use of their Chairman, Sir Michael Rake. I said at the time that I didn't much rate BET.

It seems I wasn't alone. During a Digital Britain session at BT's recent ISP Forum at the BT Tower it seems that there was absolutely no interest in BET from any of the 60 or so ISPs present at the meeting. Even BT must pick up on that take-home message. The reason for the resounding lack of interest comes down to question of economics. If you need 15 customers in an exchange to make BET viable, it is pretty close to the cost viability of installing fibre.

That leads nicely into the bigger question of the affordability of fibre in rural areas. So far, the view of what fibre costs has been conducted at a very naive level and it no doubt suits some organisations to keep it that way. The reality is that unless a fully comprehensive cost benefit analysis is undertaken, we keep getting bound into an overly simplistic costing model that claims fibre to remote areas is simply unaffordable.

Applying the same model, over a century ago, to piped water, gas supplies, community sewerage schemes and electricity would have resulted in no local or national schemes as it would have bee unaffordable to connect the majority of the population. Thankfully, our forefathers had a clarity of vision that is lost on most in the broadband industry today. They were well aware that a purely supply/demand driven model did not add up. However, they also understood that non-financial benefits and costs had financial impacts. When the true costs of health, welfare and the like were poured into the mix, then suddenly the economic balance shifted and it became nationally unaffordable not to make provision for these new essentials.

It is clear that we need people with equal clarity of vision in charge of the major telcos today. With one or two exceptions, they aren't in place yet!