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By editorial@silicon.com, 22 February 2002 00:01

COMMENT E-minister Douglas Alexander jets off to sunny Spain today to meet his European counterparts and get down to the nitty-gritty of broadband. The task of rolling out high-speed net access across an entire continent is ambitious, almost as ambitious, let's say, as trying to get service providers to connect up the British countryside. Labour's rejection of tax breaks or funding to boost broadband is well documented. Instead Alexander and his team have opted for a policy of aggregating local government spend to tempt service providers out of their city domains. The government spends £1.7bn a year on its telco bill. That includes hospitals, schools and libraries as well as central government. Alexander's cunning plan is to bundle those local contracts together and offer the resulting financial reward to service providers who will invest in the necessary infrastructure. Sounds good in theory but government procurement is notoriously littered with pitfalls. For starters, what about existing relationships and contracts? It's not by any means certain that local authorities be prepared to toss those aside. And if procurement teams are required to consider the competitive landscape before awarding contracts, does that mean that value-for-money will be of less importance? It seems unlikely. "I'm convinced there are opportunities there but it is a difficult policy to achieve," Alexander admitted. "If you can better coordinate where contracts are placed you should be able to use that purchasing power to get better policy decision without losing best value." So what about BT? Should the dominant telecoms provider be worried that one of its largest clients is being encouraged to look elsewhere in the name of fair competition? "I can't anticipate where the money will be spent, all I can tell you is that we are sincere in our aim to encourage competition," claimed the e-minister. If he succeeds, maybe BT will find its relationship with the Labour is just a little less cosy. But that's a big if.