David Brunnen writes: "The UK’s low fibre diet is doing nothing for the health of the economy and society’s digitally excluded will stay that way." 

Those unfortunate enough to be involved in a train crash or some massive disaster are often left with a vivid slow motion replay burned into the memory.   Some folks even report a marginal predictive capability – ‘I could see it was going to happen’ – but this only kicks in when the scale of the impending disaster is immediately obvious. Cotton on too late and it all comes as a dreadful surprise. 

Those who look at the aftermath of infrastructure failure have the lofty benefit of perfect rear-view vision and can declare it was ‘a disaster waiting to happen’.  More generous but not directly damaged souls describe these accidents as ‘a valuable learning experience’. 

World leaders have largely woken up to climate change because it’s becoming almost impossible to ignore the evidence.  The response delay reflects the collective power of wishful thinking.  Unfortunately in real life the ideas, ideals and ideologies can sometimes only be proven wrong when put to the test. 

Broadband Aggregation – collective buying for the public sector – was one of those ideas.  It’s seen as a failure not because it wasn’t a good idea but because there were umpteen other interests that got in the way of making it work.  Some say it was always doomed but the momentum of support behind the idea meant that there was only one way of finding out.  Several million pounds later we know the answer. 

It’s experiences like that that make our civil servants cautious and to look for projects with fewer uncertain variables.  The pendulum swings away from extremes of complexity to favour projects that can be kept as simple as possible.   And, to tidy away an obvious minor snag in the search for a Digital Dividend, what could be simpler than making sure that old folks and the less fortunate can be given free digital set-top boxes when the time comes to switch off the analogue TV transmitters?   £600m should do it, Baggins – and this time we want no complications.  Yes Sir, of course Sir, says Baggins.  Accidents don’t happen in any slower motion than this – unless perhaps you count the voting down of the 1989 plan for fibre in the UK. 

No complications?  

So now go and Google the spec for these set-top boxes.   Astute readers will notice that any form of return channel – even an inbuilt modem -  is explicitly ruled out.   Let’s not think about what we can expect by way of interactive programming in 2012.  Let’s not worry that the recipients will be those who represent the massed ranks of the digitally excluded.  Let’s not consider that some other government department is trying to transform the quality and delivery of public services to the under-privileged.  Let’s not imagine how annoying it is to be told umpteen times over that if you been affected by these issues you can get more information at wubblewibblewabble or some such thing that’s beyond comprehension.  Let’s go and send engineers to each and every one of these deserving citizens and install something that’s below par today, let alone in five year’s time. 

In other countries like Holland the digital TV switchover has been a non-event – largely because they have a comprehensive national network infrastructure that can deliver TV.  We are, of course, only keeping up a tradition of amateur muddling through.  The UK’s low fibre diet is doing nothing for the health of the economy and society’s digitally excluded will stay that way -  just like those living in our several thousand broadband Not Spots.  There’ll be a plum job going in 2017 to do the after-math.  The report will say, ‘With the benefit of hindsight it was an accident waiting to happen’.

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This article was first published in NetworkingPlus magazine, March 2007

(C) ABFL Groupe Intellex 2007.