For speakers at business conferences the sight of a sea of heads bowed as if in silent prayer is, alas, not so much a measure of your sleep-inducing monotonic delivery but simply a failure to compete with the pressing attractions of text messaging and mobile email.

But this week we have been reminded of the power of good public speaking. 

We have been reminded of the power of simple ideas clearly expressed.    

We’ve been reminded of the power – the energy - that is generated when your audience is so in tune with your message that what may once have seemed impossible is now, so obviously, do-able. Yes we can. 

November 4^th  2008 may be memorable for all sorts of reasons.  Not all of the delegates gathered in the UK’s Manchester town hall for a conference on Next Generation Access may recall the day as this ‘Defining Moment’. 

But for those who were listening to the keynote presentation by Francesco Caio it is a reasonable bet that somewhere around slides 13 and 14 they were, suddenly, brought up short by a penny-dropping moment. 

The author of the UK government’s ‘Review of Barriers to Investment in Next Generation Access’ had already set out the context, the key issues and the general conclusion that the case for public sector intervention was, for the time being, weak. Certainly there were no surprises in any of that. 

But then he turned the focus of his analysis onto the new pressure points in Backhaul and in Access and the scope for radical shifts in market structure.   And it was here that the power of simple ideas clearly expressed provided delegates with a moment of clarity. 

He observed that the critical bottleneck that is the Access infrastructure is now being resolved by a shift of ownership from telecoms providers to consumers.   By making such a clear distinction between the Access infrastructure and the Services that are carried across it, Francesco Caio has legitimised and enabled those who see ‘Open Access’ designs as key to advanced infrastructure investment and a more competitive and innovative choice of Services for all network users whether they be business or individual consumers. 

Evidence of this trend is all around us.  More than half of all local community areas in Sweden already enjoy locally managed networks that better reflect the needs of the local economy and community.  In major regeneration projects such as Titanic Quarter in Belfast, the developer is acting as proxy for the home owner by ensuring that the Access infrastructure is as much a part of the fabric as roads, sewers, street lighting and parks.

And these are not isolated examples but such a clear trend that in countries like The Netherlands the old incumbent Telco is a willing participant in that shift of ownership. Other speakers helped delegates to understand the complete recipe for rational investment, and this understanding was undoubtedly assisted by a recitation of the conventional position of the legacy Telco.  

More importantly it became clear that the power of simple ideas clearly expressed would be reflected in the many opportunities for small-scale initiatives and digital planning that would provide essential market education at very low cost to the public purse. 

Whether these Access initiatives are seen as temporary ‘islands of fibre’ linked by backhauling bridges or a patchwork to be sewn together, the answer to today’s broadband ‘no-spots’, or ‘not-yet-good-enough-spots’, is a whole series of ‘oh-yes-we-can-spots’. 

Whose line is it anyway?

_____________________________________

NextGen08 was organised by the Community Broadband Network in partnership with DC10+ and the Community Network Forum.