The standard pioneers’ lament, the frequent complaint that others “just don’t get it” (see earlier editorial) is merely a measure of our inability ‘to explain the new concepts with sufficient clarity and persuasive force’.

The Digital Britain report published yesterday may have shaken a few trees but seems not, on first reading of the UK’s media response, to have cleared much deadwood from the minds of those analysts paid to inform the wider public.

Maybe the most valuable outcome of this long journey to a wide-ranging 238-page report (and the promise of 26 further consultations) is to measure from media reactions the distance that must still be travelled.

The Financial Times led the charge by dismissing the universal service obligation as ‘a waste of money’ and, with accustomed London-centricity, considered that ‘the indignity of a slow Internet connection does not prevent crofters from accessing public broadcasting and services’ and complained that there was no need to subsidise ‘the browsing of people who happen to live in network blackspots, verdant islands or isolated idylls’.

This dismissive presumption that all the Internet delivers to distant peasants is ‘Facebook, Club Penguin, World of Warcraft and peer-to-peer file sharing’ was not far from the theme of The Independent’s Jeremy Warner who apparently thinks that Digital Britain is already so successful that any intervention (‘interference’) is unnecessary.  ‘Why’, he asks, ’should us “townies” be forced to subsidise the digital future of those who choose the supposedly higher quality of life of the remote countryside? Did he get as far as looking at the maps on pages 55 & 56?  Or maybe his comments on the damage to fields from 4x4’s was intended to be ironic?

Few champions of free markets are yet ready to criticise privatised failures to invest in economy-enabling digital infrastructures, and rural inhabitants don’t need slow broadband speeds to remind them of this when their computers are already disrupted by electricity power outages.

The Digital Britain report is undoubtedly a huge achievement.  It  is a massive piece of work summarising the collaborative inputs of a vast range of informed stakeholders.  It has raised these topics further up the policy ladder than ever before.  It has opened up new possibilities for a more sensible debate.  It will be a long haul before these issues will be more fully understood – particularly by those responsible for the re-invigoration of local economies.  And, as Lord Carter steps back, the road ahead will need new and visionary leaders – both public and private.

The value of the Digital Britain report will eventually be judged on the priority it gives to enabling new and very different opportunities rather than protecting old and now less-than-fit-for-purpose constructs 

It deserves to treated with greater seriousness than London-based media-focused commentators seem able to muster.

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See the full Digital Britain report