Yesterday, I spent most of the day at the OECD’s forum on next generation networks (NGN). Some observations:

* The most interesting presentation was from the U.S. carrier Verizon. Verizon clearly know how to sell the benefits of NGN to policy-makers and the public. They are touting the speed and the high-def television aspects of their new network, called FiOS - details here. FiOS delivers 27 high def channels. Essentially, Verizon is going head-to-head against cable and satellite.

* Verizon’s approach contrasted with other carriers, who appear mainly to present NGN as a significant cost and efficiency savings in their voice and data networks. That’s good, I suppose. McDonald’s is probably constantly investing in advanced milkshake blending technologies (making the cows eat the strawberries before milking them), but that’s internal to McDonald’s (and the cows) and I probably should not care unless I am a major shareholder. So, telcos beware - if you send your engineers to an OECD event to talk-up the benefits of NGN, you better make sure they articulate some benefits beyond their own network - otherwise, the ’so what’ response seems appropriate.

* The real question presented was whether policy makers need to shift their thinking to respond to what NGN offers. The answer: not much. The European regulatory systems are already taking into account these developments. We were told that the European Regulators Group will issue a document called ‘Interim Report on Regulatory Principles for NGN’ sometime this quarter.

* Speaking of regulatory principles, Viviane Reading’s reputation with the ‘better regulation’ crowd often found at these events is not very good. In the lunch buffet line, I asked someone from the mobile industry what they thought about Reading’s roaming proposal. The response was funny - this person said something to the effect of: ‘well, it used to be that economics was important when dealing with the European Commission on telecoms matters’, implying that Reading was merely pursuing political goals.