Mind The Gap

"The entire media sector is becoming increasingly dependent on the internet. We seem woefully ignorant of the implications of this. We need a next generation network - what I would call true broadband of 100Mb - into every home if we are to deliver on these promises. The ISPs are holding back. My radical proposal, which I accept will probably never happen, is that we need a public sector internet. Just as we build roads to carry traffic, but don't regulate what travels on them."

Thus spake veteran internet commentator Bill Thompson (www.thebillblog.com), proposing, as he says, a radical solution to the need to get people online at at least the same speed as everything on which they depend is migrating there.

At first glance, his idea does seem a little unlikely. The Internet is still essentially a commodity offered by private companies about which we make an individual purchasing decision, just as we do about shoes, toothpaste or ten thousand other things.

Do we want to be online? If so, when, how often, for what purpose, for how long, with what connection, to which device(s) etc etc.

Hardly something for Government to get involved with – but then if you look at our daily lives now compared to just a decade ago, and then again to how they might be in another ten years, there may be more than a spark of good sense in it.

Back in the mid-90s, the small Nottingham PR consultancy for which I worked only had an internal e-mail system (I shall pause for a moment whilst any readers under the age of 25 choke on their Fanta in disbelief…) and I distinctly recall wondering, in my almost unfeasible naivety, whether I would have an e-mail address all of my very own….

Fast forward through copious e-mail addresses and a rainbow assortment of gizmos and gadgets, and we arrive at 2008 to find a huge proportion of our lives set in a virtual world.

We shop, book holidays, work, play, converse, socialise, watch television, listen to the radio, research illnesses, develop new skills, gain qualifications, live ‘other lives’ (www.secondlife.com) and even (forgive the mention of my favourite pastime of the moment) play Scrabble online (www.scrabulous.com).

And yet whilst there’s absolutely no way that, in the coming years, fewer people will be doing less on the Internet, you can find yourself unable to do very much of use if you happen to live (or choose to live) in the wrong place when it comes to accessing broadband infrastructure.

So to avoid the creation of a ‘virtual divide’ between those with access to high-speed broadband and those without, shouldn’t the Government be seriously investigating Bill Thompson’s idea?

There is a precedent for such publicly-funded intervention which the people of Whitehaven will no doubt tell you all about if you ask.

The gradual switchover to digital television that is currently making its way around the UK is, according to the organisation behind it (www.digitaluk.co.uk), being undertaken to “make it fairer for everyone” as “currently, one in four UK homes cannot get digital TV via their aerial and many still cannot receive Five.”

Digital UK is predominantly the property of our public service broadcasters, but it was set up at the request of the Government and ‘works closely’ with the DTI and DCMS.

So if our political masters can have such a strong influence in one media sector in the interests of fairness, surely it isn’t too unfeasible an idea to at least consider doing the same in another where equity of access is, arguably, going to be far more important in the future?

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