The next big thing on the UK government’s
e-agenda is a shakeup of the telecoms’ infrastructure to
drive the pace of competition.
Patricia Hewitt, minister for Ecommerce
and Small Business, told business leaders this week that the
next area for “domestic concern following the Electronic
Communications Bill has to do with telecom
infrastructure and the market framework for telecoms.” This appears to
be an indirect warning aimed towards U.K. telco British Telecom (BT).
At the event hosted by law firm Dibb
Lupton Alsop, Hewitt said that one of the government’s most
important objectives is to “go on driving competition further
and faster into the telecoms’ market.” The U.K. government also
“has to look at how we create an effective framework as
telecoms, broadcasting and computing converge.”
Hewitt praised BT for cutting costs of
fixed access through telephony, but stressed the need for more
action.
“What we want to see is the cost of Internet access
continuing to fall much further and much faster, and a wider
range of tariffs becoming available, including the option
of a flat-rate subscription and unmetered access for
peak-hour Internet access all day, all week,” she said.
BT’s proposals for a new unmetered access
scheme, called Surf Time, were welcomed as a step in the
right direction, but the next challenge is for the telco
and “Oftel (the British telecommunications authority) to agree a wholesale pricing structure and to agree
the interconnection regime which will enable competing
operators to provide a range of services and tariff packages for
Internet access,” said Hewitt.
She ruled out direct government action,
saying that it is Oftel’s responsibility, but added that
regulator David Edmond “shares my view on the strategic and
economic importance of these issues, and Oftel is pulling out
the stops to ensure that they get an early and thorough
agreement on this point.”