It’s official, folks, as released by the Cabinet Office on April Fool’s Day in its strategy document.
That marvellous quote is at p13. I
It gets worse at p14 with a wilfully misleading headline that UK is the ‘most extensive and competitive broadband market in the G7′ - when in fact, errr, we are 3rd in the second category and top in the first because [a] there is no wholesale competition to BT; [b] we classify 512Kb/s as broadband, not midband. The Japanese and Canadians must be amused…
But at least ‘The UK has put in place a world-leading regulatory framework’ - which again many countries must find amusing - OfCom was planned to be introduced in 1998-9, and finally crawled off the statute books in 2003…Swiss OfCom (and even Malaysia, and Australia, and New Zealand, and the US, and Canada) is more a world leader, as will be clear in Barcelona next week at CEPT.
OfCom itself is a great deal more honest in its Strategic Reviews than this document. Good for them and shame on this Election-eve pamphlet dressed up as strategy. I feel genuinely sorry and embarrassed for those civil servants obliged to work on it.
This all goes to show that policymaking pronouncements from Downing St should be banned in the phoney Election period - but at least they’ll be forgotten after the Election. Remember George Bush remembering what broadband was last autumn? Nothing happened … except Kevin Martin finally got his big chance. Will Stephen Carter get his? (Chance, that is).