All about change
The ICAEW have put together some good ideas regarding what to do next after the demise of the RDA’s.
See their press release on the ICAEW website Business support: ideas for the future
The wait and see approach as to what aspects of support are retained in the centre has a great deal to be said for it. The LEPs could be toothless by the time the Coalition has retained all the juicy bits.
If you want a shiny PDF of the article use the contact page and I will email one.
Earlier in the month the Cabinet Office released a press release about the cost of some information web sites run by UK Government departments – see the release “Clamp down on Government websites to save millions” on the Cabinet Office Site.
A report published today by the Central Office for Information (COI) found that across government £94 million has been spent on the construction and set up and running costs of just 46 websites and £32 million on staff costs for those sites in 2009-10. The most expensive websites are:
- uktradeinvest.gov.uk which costs £11.78* per visit; and
- businesslink.gov.uk which costs £2.15 per visit.
Before we lose some of these sites perhaps we should have more information than just the headline grabbing cost per visit.
HOW MUCH REVENUE DID THE PUBLIC GENERATE FROM THE INFORMATION PER CLICK?
I recently commented to a post on the ICAEW ION ITCOUNTS website about the same report:
As with all statistics the headline is in the detail a big cost number divided by a small user number is always a big number, but over what period, equally have the websites been through a major re-write during the period all giving them a high rating,
Obviously some sites have had a lot of money spent on their pretty design (usability as well don’t forget) but we have to ascertain if the end-users of the sites have actually benefited the economy by using the information provided on the site. How would the Cabinet Office collect that information?
After all the information has to be made available, the issue is that they should not be marketing portals for government/party departments they have to be useful information for the citizens and business of the country.
I guess the policy decision was to make the information available on the internet, the civil servants (who are still in post) decided how and how much to spend of their finite resources (our tax pounds) creating the sites.
Having followed the tweets on #bduk and the Broadband Industry Event it all felt like déjà-vu and the same debate held in 2002 when BT would not provide broadband to rural communities because they were having difficulty convincing the 70% of the country that had broadband available for a couple of years but were not buying into the high speed access. It was the community evangelists of the 30% who provided BT with the information and more importantly the viral advertising network as to what was available once you had 512k always on broadband. This advertising meant that BT could actually sell their moribund product to the urban communities and make even more shareholder return on their inherited infrastructure rather than using the fibre they had planned to install before privatisation.
BT then also delivered 512k to the majority of the rural communities giving those evangelists the same tools as the rest of country. The advertising continued and Government invested to reduce future costs by creating online services on the premise that the bulk of the country had access. But we still have all the not-spots and not all of them are rural.
see this Telegraph article for some numbers "Delay to rural broadband roll out ‘a backward step’"
So now in 2010 where are we, lots of ideas on usage, lots of plans for the urban conurbations to have super fast broadband while no one yet has the killer application.
there were no killer application in 2002, though peer to peer could be one – not a good one for an asymmetrical like ADSL.
But the poor not-spots and the rural communities are in a similar position to that of 2002, a perception from the incumbent suppliers (BT, Virgin and the LLU companies) that the lines will not be profitable. Yet perhaps we should ask BT how much public money they paid back after RDA’s funded investment in rural exchanges that became profitable as soon as they provided ADSL?
The Universal Service Commitment was being asked for in 2002 it has taken seven years for the powers that be to accept that always on high speed access is the same as water and electricity. We learnt today that it will be another five years before we will have a guaranteed 2mb to every household and business. By then the urban community will have super fast broadband as noted in Jeremy Hunt’s speech today with BT’s investment.
If everyone has a right now to 2mb surely that right will increase by 2015 for the same reasons the powers that be took so long to accept between 2000 and 2010?
Wonder where we would be if Mrs Thatcher had allowed both BT to put in their fibre in 1979 and Murdoch to have his satellite licences rather than allow one monopoly to grow at the expense of the other?
At #BDUK the not spot information was to be made available if you signed an NDA (is it really competitive information, or market failure data?), in the past the Regional Development Agencies would be able to sign those NDA’s and plan their access campaign’s accordingly, now we have to rely on the non existent LEP’s ……
This article should be read “Two key ideas for better broadband”
Two key ideas for better broadband
The government’s Industry Day summit on Thursday to launch its key broadband policies risks missing out on some of the key ideas on how to tackle the UK’s big problems according to Point Topic, the broadband data analysts.
Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Culture, who leads the Coalition’s policy for broadband, has set two main objectives – to make sure that everyone can get at least two-megabits per second broadband by the end of 2012, and to give Britain the best superfast broadband network in Europe by 2015. The Industry Day is intended to set out the policy in more detail and win industry support for carrying it out.
Tim Johnson, Chief Analyst at Point Topic, is concerned that some of the most important ideas for turning these ambitious policies into reality will not even get discussed at the Industry Day. Two things he believes are essential if the policy is going to be successful; first, to ensure competitors in the broadband market have access to the information they need to invest in the new networks and second, to recognise that the task is bigger than expected.
One example of where the broadband industry needs to have open access to information is the location of BT’s street cabinets. Most of the individual cabinets are sitting on the pavement, visible to everyone, but knowing where they all are, across the whole UK, is vital to targeting investment, whether it’s for the “two-meg minimum” or full next generation access. ………………
This map has way to many red spots…..
![tfsmj2010[1]](http://www.pmtate.co.uk/images/Pointtopicmapnotspots_ACE6/tfsmj20101.gif "tfsmj2010[1]")
They have a bigger version here http://point-topic.com/content/dslanalysis/tfsmj2010.html
USC broadband must be put in place before 2012 not moved out to 2015. As mentioned at #BDUK “Market failure” has been achieved so central funding can be used and a new public infrastructure put together it will after all provide savings across the board of Coalition spending which will improve it for everyone including those that have fast broadband.
The Rural Regeneration Programme run by one of those hated RDA’s has given out £200,000 to Worcester-based Airband Community Internet Ltd to provide high speed coverage across towns in Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire.
Hopefully the new LEP’s will be able to have access to the same or similar funding in the future for other rural areas like Banburyshire, a rural community surrounding Banbury and currently part of five RDA’s.
the full announcement can be found here:
High Speed Rural Broadband becomes reality as new pilot launched at RRZ Conference
