Rants

Posted on 6 Aug 2009 at 12:35

 

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David Ludlow worries that too much new technology is ending up on the scrap heap, but Mel Croucher argues that we'll all be on it if we don't sort out Britain's broadband.

I went to see a Scottish comedian recently - a stand-up clown called Gordon Brown. He did this routine about a broadband tax. It was bloody hilarious. When he went into a riff about making Britain the broadband world leader, I nearly wet myself. I heckled him, of course. After all, that's what stand-up is all about.

"Oi, Gordon!" I yelled out. "Taiwan achieved 100 per cent broadband coverage a year ago, and they've got speeds of 160Mbit/s." Quick as a flash he came back with "All of Britain will achieve broadband speeds of 2Mbit/s by 2012". Two megs a second! Brilliant! But I countered with, "Yeah Gordon, but everyone in South Korea's already got fifty megs a second. And by your target of 2012 it will be up to a hundred." Gordon went into a brilliant deadpan shtick and gurned, "Aha! But BT has a £1.5 billion budget to put fibre-optic cables in 40 per cent of Britain's homes by 2012. The other 60 per cent can get broadband through copper wires." Well, I couldn't top that, so all I shouted was, "Tell us how much your broadband tax is, Gordon!" Then he made a funny face, blinked and delivered the killer punchline, saying, "50p a month on every fixed telephone line in the land". My socks ran screaming into the night after I laughed them off. The man is a comic genius.

There are 34 million fixed lines in the UK. A tax of 50p a month will raise £204 million a year. So by the King of Comedy's own account, being hugely under budget to deliver pitiful speeds to four out of 10 cabled homes will make us the broadband world leader by the London Olympics. I mean, you've got to laugh, haven't you?

This recession is a portal that links two different economic eras. The old era relied on top-down communications from business to customer. The new era is driven by peer-to-peer online communication. Any organisation that doesn't understand this will be flushed down the electronic toilet. Broadband communications are vital to success, and must be every organisation's top priority as the economic recovery begins. Any manager, director or board member who blusters "I don't need to understand new technology" deserves to be sacked, because they have failed to realise that brand loyalty is a remnant of the old era. It's over.

The demographic time bomb facing all private and public organisations has already exploded. Most people no longer make decisions by what they read in newspapers, hear on the radio and see on television, but via social networking sites, blogs and Tweets. Any private or public organisation that isn't prepared for this revolution will be left behind in the dust of those nations that have already embraced it. We must heckle as loud as we can and demand access to the fastest possible broadband connections for all our citizens, as our most important social and economic priority ever. And if we don't, then we're all just a laughable bunch of clowns.

Author: Mel Croucher