Seeking to take advantage of the ’shopportunity’ created by the two-dollar-pound increase Ofcom’s exposure to U.S. marketplace and regulatory developments, Ofcom CEO Ed Richards recently went to America. Interestingly, there’s very little if any coverage of the trip — it must have been intentionally low-key. I suppose Ofcom did not want to upstage the Queen. I did find one blogger, Susan Crawford, who covered a presentation Richards gave at Columbia University. She writes:

“Richards responded (paraphrase): Yes, your facts [about slow UK broadband speeds] are right, but “there will be change”. Why — because people deserve it? because we’re behind Paris? I hope that we are not as concerned about politicians are about [broadband league tables]. I know that broadband is a big yardstick of national machismo, but you have to think about these things carefully. You shouldn’t sell your soul in the short term. You could end up losing all the longer-term dynamic benefits of competition. True, we may be entering a time when the economies of scale/barriers to entry for new providers are even more profound, but you shouldn’t leap ahead with a policy response out of a national sense of pride.

And here’s where I heard it all come together.

Richards said (paraphrase mine): We won’t give network providers money — instead, we want to let the market make the decision. Are consumers willing to pay for a higher-speed broadband network? It has to be be funded by consumers. I see no case for funding broadband by the government. A national response of government funding would likely waste taxpayers money, preempt the market, and re-create a state monopoly. So we have to encourage consumers to pay more — they need to like the service proposition that they get. This can include content rights, bundles of services, etc.”

Funny, I wonder if Richards actually said ‘we have to encourage consumers to pay more’…? Now there’s a quote no public regulator wants to have associated with their name! Actually, I am willing to pay for higher-speeds for my broadband. In fact, I already pay Talk Talk for ‘up to 8 meg’ but consistently receive less than 500 kbps. Ofcom should get ahead of this issue by investigating broadband speed claims and — where appropriate — requiring broadband providers to actually deliver something close to what they promise.

It’s not materially different from the phone-quiz problem: People are being told something that isn’t true in many cases.