Greater good
How do you juggle the demand for efficiency with social policy? I think the need to drive efficiency goes hand in hand with social concerns. We’re trying to make that link – both for policymakers and for industry stakeholders – because those questions around broadband pricing and affordability really matter. It feels to us like those two worlds can sometimes be quite disconnected. What do you do about the people who are not in the market? For a while, there was this phrase ‘digital poverty.’ I dislike it because it leads to a false understanding. There isn’t a set of people who are living great lives, affording most things but not connectivity. If you can’t afford connectivity, you probably can’t afford food or transport. If they were empowered to be online, perhaps they’d have more chance of getting a better job, improving their income and managing their money. It’s a route to a better life. There’s a question about how the government should face up to that. Is the government receiving any pushback from businesses? The banking industry isn’t going to pay for everybody to get broadband and develop digital skills, nor is the rail network – and nor are we. The government needs to step in and bring about some coordination. I don’t see how these different industries can figure that out together. Digital literacy is an increasingly important skill in the modern world. What impact could this have on government programmes? All content is not the same. Those things are getting more complicated, and the essential services that use the internet are only going to
THE NEED TO DRIVE EFFICIENCY GOES HAND IN HAND WITH SOCIAL CONCERNS. WE’RE MAKING THAT LINK grow. Today has been focused on content, but there’s lots of talk about driverless cars, remote medical treatments over the internet – things that have a completely different requirement in terms of reliability. How can you keep the benefits while managing the costs? Generally, you do that through regulation. It often seems that regulatory intervention is reactive rather than prescriptive. How can you keep pace with industry changes? One of the key questions in the UK is the idea of universality. What is good enough? It evolves over time but we tend to know what it is. At the minute, it’s probably one or two streams of HD. That’s what you can get on the standard telly, that’s what you can get on broadcast. You don’t need fibre to achieve that. We always get that innovation at the top with ultra HD, 4K and 8K, but do you need to say every single household in the UK gets that? Probably not. In some ways, broadcast has set what’s good enough. Commercialisation encourages efficiency and innovation. BEHIND CLOSED DOORS FEED ’s day finished with a tour of BT’s media centres, through a separate entrance and up a few floors. Allowing BT employees to monitor and troubleshoot hundreds of signals in real time, the centres play an integral role in effective, uninterrupted content distribution. With staff working in split shifts, there will always be someone on hand to ensure Britain stays connected. Today, telecoms companies like BT are vital. Connectivity enables almost everything we do, from accessing our bank accounts to communicating with friends and family to calling 999. More specifically, content enriches both our professional and personal lives, entertaining and informing us. Without a proper distribution system for all this online traffic – one that keeps up with contemporary demands – our lives would look a whole lot different.
After the BT presentation,
we sat down with BT policy director Helen Burrows to get a sense of the bigger picture. She shared her insights on governmental intervention, universality and striking a balance between efficiency and affordability
CONNECTIVITY ENABLES ALMOST EVERYTHING WE DO, FROM ACCESSING OUR BANK ACCOUNTS TO CALLING 999
Watson agreed with Bramley; the future will require universal, high-speed, reliable connectivity. “The number that grows slowly is the number of eyeballs in the country; however, the number of places they can look is growing rapidly,” he said. In other words, the rate of content growth is outpacing population growth, and providers need to keep pace.
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