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Saturday 12 July 2008

Turkeys voting for Christmas

FTTH is a disruptive technology. It changes the game - totally. It leaves the cosy business models of traditional telcos lying broken and bleeding in the gutter. Maybe I'm missing something here, but can someone explain to me therefore why Ofcom and others seem to believe that the best way to work out how to deploy FTTH in the UK is to consult with the incumbent players (i.e. those with the most to lose)?

If Ofcom's duty is to act in the best interests of the citizen/consumer, then why consult with industry vested interests about NGA. Turkeys don't vote for Christmas.

We currently sit at a tipping point brought about by the dual realities of fibre and digital convergence. The UK digital communications infrastructure of 2015 will be unrecognisable in comparison with what we see today. Along with many commentators far better qualified to comment than myself, I believe that there is now a very real opportunity to create a multitude of small interconnected - and hopefully in many cases community owned - NGANS, ending once and for all the monopoly of BT, bringing a real market into being, and delivering real broadband and real value to consumers.

Perhaps I'm starting to answer my own question...

Let a thousand flowers bloom! (as long as they are standards based, open, and fully interoperable).

2 comments:

Cybersavvy UK said...

Nice point. Surely this is the paradigm shift many of us have waited for, many fail to understand, and many fear?

Graham said...

Certainly feared by some (I hope), and certainly misunderstood by many if not most. My concern is that the powers that be will signally fail to grasp the lunacy of their approach, and carry on blithely supporting BT's position to the detriment of the market and the consumers (us). All we can do is point out the historical evidence that supports our approach and makes theirs seem somewhat absurd.