The current definition of the ‘Universal Service Obligation’ (USO) doesn’t allow for broadband access and the prospect of it being applied to broadband took a step backwards last month.

European Commissioner Viviane Reding said that ‘stakeholders agreed’ that there was no need to extend this safety-net to include what is rapidly becoming the primary communications medium for business - broadband.  It would, apparently, be unfair to less developed European countries to impose such heady aspirations as having networks fit for the 21st century.  This judgement will disappoint many businesses with operational and flexible working strategies that are dependent on ubiquitous service coverage – and not just within the UK.  

The Universal Service Obligation arose in the era of state-owned Telco’s.   As they moved towards a competitive environment it was recognised that state-funded investment in distribution networks needed protection every bit as much as consumers and businesses needed assurance that telephony would be available to all.  The USO did not apply to new market entrants.  Cable companies and metropolitan networks could ‘cherry-pick’  profitable locations and, despite Telco mutterings about ‘level playing fields’, this was seen as an incentive to encourage new infrastructure investment. 

As the older Telco’s now race to dump the PSTN and replace it with all-IP Next Generation broadband networks it  is unclear whether the USO will survive or be replaced by a ‘Best Efforts’ environment.  For some time across Europe the larger Telco’s have increasingly become wholesalers - the investor of last resort and supplier of basic services for resellers and distributors who know much about marketing but now’t about infrastructure investment and carrier-class network management.   BT, for example, increasingly looks like Network Rail but with an extra portfolio of passenger services competing with its main customers. 

The Telco’s, of course, need the NGN cost-reductions that are essential for their survival.   New market entrants are shifting their focus from Reselling to Unbundling – taking on a smidgeon of operational responsibility.   This new wave of ‘cherry-picking’ investment will certainly deliver better broadband but only for those in selected areas. 

In France the alternative broadband comes with ‘free’ telephone calls.  In the UK the Carphone Warehouse proposition is the other way round – ‘free’ broadband bundled with your telephony.   Either way these services are far from universal and the headline rates of 8Mb/s are only available in the cherry-picked locations.  CMA members from large organisations will need to make careful assessments before committing to applications that cannot, for example, be delivered in all of their High Street branches or employees’ homes.   

The gap between broadband access theory and reality seems to be growing ever wider.  Why is it that significant numbers of would-be customers say they cannot get broadband connectivity when as far as the government is concerned it’s ‘Job Done’?     It is still far from clear how well DSL will perform as take-up rises and the challenges of cross-talk inhibit effective data rates. 

We all put up with patchy availability and intermittent performance for many things – electricity, mains gas, drainage, bus services and mobile phones - but for our telephone service we have, for the moment, a Universal Service Obligation.   The Telco’s happily agree with the EU Commissioner that the USO should not apply to broadband access.  But this is the broadband that is supposed to deliver the rich and competitive variety of IP telephony services that you imagined you might one day be enjoying. 

Universal Service?  Universal Access?  Obligation?  ‘Put up a parking lot’.

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First published in NetworkingPlus May 2006