By Natasha Lomas, 15 June 2009 12:02
NEWS
The government's interim Digital Britain report doesn't offer enough help for business, according to a senior Cable & Wireless executive.
The final report, due out this week, will set the government's digital agenda for the coming years, tackling subjects including broadband, spectrum distribution and online content.
Phil Male, operations director at Cable & Wireless, described the interim report, published in January, as "an opportunity missed".
"There isn't anything in there that stimulates, or for the business community," he told silicon.com.
Male said getting high capacity connections for business can still be expensive for UK businesses - and the report doesn't offer any help. "Ethernet is not widely available," he added.
He also criticised the lack of measures to stimulate digital start-ups in the UK. "One of the things you thought might be in [the report] would be some sort of stimulation for innovation and growth around the business sectorÂ… [but it's] not even touched upon," he said.
Among the proposals contained in the report are the provision of universal access to up to 2Mbps broadband and the potential creation of a second public broadcaster to rival the BBC.
But according to Male this focus on the consumer and media sectors is to the detriment of UK Plc.
"It's good that government are taking an interest," said Male. "The thing that worries us about it is if you were to sit there and say 'let's cook up a cunning plan for restimulating economic growth in the UK', I wouldn't necessarily say that the best way to do that is to give everyone 2Mbps broadband and make them watch more telly. That may not be the right message."
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1. Mark Hosey
As I understand it the general population who have land line connections will be expected to stump up an extra £3 per annum to partly fund higher speed to their homes. I also understand that the project will also be partly funded by the tax payer, which is fair enough. That's why we all pay taxes, i.e. to pay for services and infrastructure that are considered essential for a healthy, well educated and efficiently run community.
However, I am becoming increasingly annoyed by industry’s incessant demands for services, often very specialised services, to be provided by the state for their benefit. Many of those services they should be funding themselves, as they did in the past.
I reckon if the business community want more and better services funded and paid for by the state (regardless of what those services are) they should be prepared to pay higher taxes to fund them and their share holders be prepared to accept lower dividends and the bosses lower wages.
I'm sick and tired of seeing my taxes being used to fund and bail out industries that should really be standing on their own two feet and not behaving like parasites on the public purse.