Report from the 2004 CMA Annual Conference and the push for broadband-enabled business interoperability.

The peaceful intellectual oasis, close to Coram Fields, that is London’s Goodenough College, was well chosen for an event where a succession of speakers demanded that the Government, Telco’s, Ofcom, Suppliers (and anyone else claiming to be a 'grown up'), ‘must try harder’.

Kicking off early on Monday morning we attacked the agenda at a brisk pace.  Carolyn Kimber’s welcome speech set the tone – no letting up on the CMA’s broadband and competition agenda but a few words of support and encouragement for Ofcom in the battles ahead.  As it happened the conference was being chaired by Ofcom’s Richard Hooper – but the welcome was not soft diplomacy but a hint of hardball and a clear signal that the CMA is back to full campaigning strength.

The first session set the UK’s narrow broadband aspirations in a sobering global perspective.  The Broadband Stakeholders Group was ‘insufficiently aggressive’.  Lobbyists had ‘not yet grasped the convergent reality that is Ofcom’.  And, kicking the big players into touch, a ‘level playing field’ was redefined as ‘a flat surface under which they have buried the competition’.

The stark message of global relativities was not lost on the delegates.  The massed ranks of big business telecoms managers, took time out from trigger-level-land and wondered awhile at our home-grown risk-aversity.

Examples from Japan – not least in the growth of fibre to the home and mobile broadband – made the UK’s slow progress towards 512Kb/s ADSL seem less than ambitious.  Fascinated were the delegates to hear, as if the ‘news’ came from some distant planet, of the outrage and disappointment felt by a new Japanese broadband operator when his supplier cocked up – and for the next few months the slow-speed return channel would only work at 1Mb/s instead of the 3Mb/s he had promised his customers.  There was a new twist on market protection - Japanese manufacturers unable to sell their products over here because they don’t make kit that runs as slow as 25% of the international standard for Broadband.

If anyone doubted that they would hear anything non-telephonic at an event run by a venerable 45-year old telecoms institution, then shock, horror, here’s a guy talking about B2B transactions with open standards for interoperability – a long stretch from ‘brass and mahogany telephony’ but neatly illustrating the breadth of today's CMA member interests.

It was perhaps inevitable that questions on the lack of attention being paid to transactional standards would not be fully understood by the speaker from Microsoft.  Another panel member (from Accenture) had a far better handle on the volume and value of B2B transactions and the extent to which the Japanese seem better organised for business collaboration.  But even he saw standards as being on the ‘nice to have’ and 'not too many please' wish list.

Pity then the poor delegates who had hoped to detect some recognition of the challenges along the axis between the high church of EDI – highly specified transaction structures but narrowly applied –  and the opposite pole of loosely drawn but more-widely applied range of XML variants.  None of the supply-side experts, it seemed, had noticed the debate about why the UK had chosen to reject global business XML schemas backed by the UN in favour of England’s very own but internationally non-interoperable island way of doing business.

Moving right along, if you don’t mind Sir, the West Midlands Police Force produced a few moments of muscular reality – explaining at the outset that by ‘broadband’ they really meant Broadband, delivering at least 10Mb/s.  Here was a Telecoms Manager who had done exactly what it said on his charge-sheet – aided and betted by a fibre network from Telewest, a giant Ethernet LAN and a commitment to VoIP with all the flexibility this brings for service nnovation, citizen satisfaction and criminal frustration.

The keynote speaker from O2 offered us a choice between Broadband and Mobility – but alas no recognition that many of us want both, and could so easily have both.  He said it in almost the same breath as arguing for sustainable competition and innovation. Did someone mention ‘level playing fields’?

Such was the strength of concern from CMA members on the thorny issues of roaming charges and fixed-to-mobile call costs that the conference Chairman was moved to call for a vote.  The Mobile Operators and the Regulator took away a very clear message that call charges from fixed line phones to mobiles should not be used as a way of subsidising mobile handsets. As in so many areas, innovative pricing policy seems dogged by flat-rate fixations.

Highlight of the afternoon was Lord Currie’s keynote – setting out Ofcom’s agenda and their support not just for innovation and competition but for vastly better design flexibility and customer service.  His call for broadband customers to enjoy the flexibility of ‘bandwidth on demand’ might have seemed like wishful future thinking to most delegates but joy to the ears of Eoin Lambkin of SatDrive – the only nationwide broadband service provider that already provides this.

The diffident dialogue with BT served to remind delegates that the major cost factor in choosing a supplier has little to with the price of services but everything to do with the relative hassle-factor of dealing with suppliers.  Business Interoperability – the ease and efficiency of working with customers and suppliers and interconnecting their different systems - is at the heart of today's supplier selection.  This is hardly a revolutionary theme, but, as in the morning session, way beyond the comprehension of some major suppliers. Maybe we just need to shout louder.

And for those who survived the dinner and turned up on the second day, there was indeed an answer.  Leastways there was a challenge –  expressed in the form of a joint Vodafone-Oracle presentation – that questioned conventional addiction to PC’s and the management overheads of terminal client software.  Broadband is not just about speed but more the freedom to live life differently.  The language of commercial collaboration is gradually escaping the scorn of business bruisers but for your average corporate subversive, daring to be different still needs massive self-confidence and more than a touch of bravado.  Once you’ve made it through the fog of convention, the bottom line is business efficiency with the freedom to innovate.

The value of networking amongst well-informed CMA members from the upper echelons of the UK’s largest businesses – the ‘thought leaders’ – was certainly not lost on Ofcom where their agenda needs more clearly to address the Business consumer and not be perceived as only focused on the Citizen consumer.

Nor was the message lost on those suppliers signing up for space at the Enterprise Networks conference and exhibition at Olympia in July.  Backed by the CMA it is seen as both a replacement for the former Brighton exhibition and the now defunct annual Networks show at the NEC Birmingham.  The success of this new 2-day event3, created and managed by Jane Murphy’s B2B Events company, has been assured by big-brand sponsorship of parallel conferences for professional managers and technical specialists.

CMA members should be well pleased at this return to determined debate and the focus of their Special Interest Groups.  These groups are getting to grips with a whole range of difficult and disruptive challenges which, if left to suppliers and regulators, would never get onto the play list for fear that they might rough-up the manicured perfection of their level playing fields.

As I wandered back to Russell Square tube station I passed by the sign at the entrance to the very flat expanse of Coram Fields – 'Adults not admitted unless accompanied by a child’.