The recently-published FCC-commissioned review of next generation connectivity policies from around the world provides significant support for the concept of Open Access local networks.

It shows that where, in the early days of DSL-based broadband, market regulators forced (onto incumbent Telco's) a determined policy of unbundling, and where those regulators also maintained and strengthened those policies in the subsequent era of fibre capabilities for delivering multiple concurrent services from multiple service providers, the impact on broadband penetration and choice of services can now be seen in the readiness of those fortunate economies for massive gains in productivity, social-cohesion and economic growth through rapid on-line service expansion.

The achievement is simply summarised as Open Access inducing Service Competition across network platforms rather than vertically-integrated competition between platforms.  In contrast to the UK’s regulatory position of seeking competition at the lowest possible levels of infrastructure, the winners have, in effect, encouraged collaborative advantage at the highest possible levels of infrastructure.  Countries such as Sweden lead in Europe whereas laggards such as the UK have not maintained the thrust of unbundling to its logical and increasingly local conclusions.  Even banks are now beginning to contemplate a proper separation of utility operations from their investment services arms.

In the US-context, for which this report was prepared, the conclusions will no doubt trigger another round of incumbent resistance.  Whether the news (that such breathtakingly radical common sense can now be discussed in the USA) will be heard loudly enough in the UK to influence or legitimise the next government’s policy approach is still very uncertain.  Caught in the headlights of recession and no matter how many brave souls (Martha Lane-Fox included) urge action for 'both moral and economic' reasons, the great weight of tradition and incumbent comfort (and inability or unwillingness to understand economic ‘complementaries’) will not vaporise overnight.

But maybe we have not reckoned with the new-found people-power so recently evident in twitter-led responses to politics and the media.  It is not just in passionate places like Paris or Prague that the people can take to the on-line streets in numbers that dwarf last generation demo’s.

Government departments and regulators may choose to block their ears to the shrill whistles of the twitterati and take comfort from the obviously undemocratic nature of such protests from a population that is mostly off-line and mostly switched off from much of that which, in their darkness, they do not yet understand.  But this centre cannot hold – it can only hold us back.

____________________

Report published 13^th October 2009

http://www.fcc.gov/stage/pdf/Berkman_Center_Broadband_Study_13Oct09.pdf