Ofcom's Partner Strategy and Market Development man, Peter Phillips, has followed up Thursdays publication of Lord Carters Digital Britain review by outlining the regulators own view in a new statement. Unsurprisingly Phillips toes the government line and shuns any notion of using public sector funds to aid in the rollout of future broadband services:


Phillips doesn't appear to recognise that a significant need for such next-gen services is to avoid that "market failure" from happening in the first place, as opposed to waiting until it bites before taking any action.

The latter mentality is risky, especially with certain types of online content (video) growing so fast that they could soon outstrip the ability of existing technologies to cope. Though he does make a fair point about the price of super-fast connections:


Indeed there's little point in having a 100Mbps connection if the pricing runs into business only territory. By modern standards an average 8Mbps link with 20 to 30GB of usage allowance might cost £20 per month, with unbundled (LLU) services often being even cheaper (e.g £15).

Unfortunately bandwidth still costs money and historically the adoption of faster services has caused people to do more online, raising usage; admittedly bandwidth costs can also reduce. Mind you, BT's preliminary Ebbsfleet fibre trials have already given us an idea of prices (news):


Typically such trials may have fewer restrictions, while any mainstream product would need to impose familiar usage allowances (FUP) to balance speed and flexibility with price. In Sweden they offer 100Mbps links with restrictions and mainstream pricing that are not unlike what we have for 8Mbps in the UK.

Sounds wonderful, 100Mbps for the equivalent of £15 to £20 per month - I'll take that! Unfortunately some of my Swedish friends also moan about how their actual performance is often far less, anything from 2Mbps to 6Mbps from what I hear. Such speeds are not dissimilar to those received via existing ADSL services.

We mustn’t forget that future services are also about making sure that those who live further from their exchange can still get faster and more stable speeds, beyond even the 2Mbps minimum recommended under new Universal Service Obligation (USO) proposals. Ofcom also notes that next-gen isn't just about fixed-line services:


True, Mobile Broadband does have a part to play and its future services look extremely promising. However we worry that Phillips might be making the age old mistake of confusing theoretical maximums with real-world throughput.

Mobile Broadband connections already have future capacity problems to worry about and are even more aggressively impacted by reception quality and high contention than land-line services. It may help to plug the proposed 2Mbps USO but cannot be put up as a saving grace for super-fast solutions, maybe in another 10 to 15 years.

Still, BT will at least be pleased to hear Phillips say that Ofcom are about to finalise their regulatory position on next-generation broadband networks. This is expected to support a position where operators with market power can set their own wholesale prices. Rivals may not like it but it's not like the government are offering many alternatives.