'You village peasants: Do you want broadband? Then give up your freedom' Europe’s new digital czar has published his first official blog post, and it will make internet service providers very happy. Customers, less so. Gunther H-dot Oettinger has departed from former EU Commissioner Steelie Neelie Kroes’ position that customers should be able to switch providers easily. While he acknowledges that …
Indeed it will. "It is similar to what we are already doing in the energy sector" is the clue.
The European Commission have overseen the decommissioning of coal plant across Europe, actively facilitated the exit from nuclear power by Belgium, Germany and Italy, whilst at the same time antagonising the Russians. That's screwed the energy sector something rotten, means if we have a cold winter Putin's got Europe's nuts in his palm, and cost all consumers a fortune.
Reading across to the fixed line telecoms market, we should anticipate protection of incumbent monopolists, destruction of vaguely functioning markets, and higher costs and worse service all round.
You did all vote to join the EU, and to hand British sovereignty to them, didn't you?
Well to be fair it's our government that put these people in place and could have blocked them.... but didn't. Any rules or cock-ups along these lines were also done with our government's approval so it seems the issue of sovereignty isn't really the problem here it's an issue of incompetence on the part of many governments.
Here in the UK we're not exactly doing much better are we?
Incidentally Belgium, at least, is trying to get it's reactors back on-line. One was sabotaged if I remember correctly.
I think they just want a shot at making a profit, so they have some chance of paying back the banks who lend them the money to build the network out. You'll remember the last big network rollout - the cable companies. In the UK, every single one went bust.
If an incumbent said "nah, can't be bothered to do that village" and there was actually money to be made, another company would leap in and do it. Why do you think Virgin's network doesn't get much beyond the biggest towns and cities? I doubt it's that they think they're making quite enough money and don't need any more right now.
If a telco prices to make a return quickly in rural areas, no-one can afford the service and it doesn't get rolled out. If a telco prices to make a return over a decade or longer, they'll want assurance that they won't get a kicking from the regulator five years down the line or again - the service doesn't get rolled out. Neither of those decisions are down to a company being awkward - it's the commercial reality of how this stuff gets funded.
The shareholders of a company - the ones that own the business - don't take kindly to their utility investments taking out massive bank loans to rollout technology that history shows us tends to result in business failure.
When you are dealing with something that is part of a large infrastructure, the maths is not quite that straightforward, because both the per-unit cost of provisioning and also the desirability of the product is dependent to a large degree on the total number of units in the infrastructure. Consider that the invention of the first telephone proved completely useless until a *second* telephone was built. The desirability of owning a telephone grew in proportion to the number of telephones in existence.
Communities are giving huge sums of (partly EU) money to large telecomunications companies, typically already monopolists in their areas, and those make small upgrades to their networks... they would have had to make anyhow since they plan to ditch ISDN.
Of course once the network is set up and customers are locked into long term contracts, they have no motivation to maintain or upgrade their networks.
"he feels for those ISPs that need more money to invest in more networks. They need “a degree of predictability about revenues” says Oetti."
How about having the ISPs offer exceptional customer service and value? That just might attract and retain some customers! A radical idea, I know, but perhaps if the ISPs treated their customers well they wouldn't have customer churn?....
And I love the little bit about how he finds time to "use the internet every day". That inspires some serious confidence! The only thing that would fill me with even more respect would be if he were to go on about how "some of my best friends use email"!
It's nice to know that society is in the best of hands....
Incumbent Telcos can only be put in their place by regulations. They ALL have made enough money over the years to wire the whole globe several times over.
Way back when the states were creating an electricity transmission network there was the "Rural Electrification" program where government subsidized the installation of the infrastructure to create and deliver the electricity and later the cost of the electricity. Of course every home wanted lighting and refrigeration and that resulted in huge gains in productivity and lowered cost of production of foodstuffs. This in turn fed the cities and allowed them to grow.
The same things have to happen for broadband internet but due to the monopoly position of the Telco's THEY should be required to provide the infrastructure.
They promised (when they charged us the line fee) to maintain the phone lines and never kept up on the promise, they let the lines fall into disrepair effectively stealing our money.
I will guarantee this is the case worldwide. Don't let them off the hook, make them pay. Require them to deliver broadband as a public utility.
If the incumbent won't, many will pop up to take their place.
This guy is yet another EU Commissioner who has spent his life as a career politician; so he is an expert on absolutely zero, not qualified in any meaningful way to give advice or enforce his opinions on how to click Lego parts together never mind anything remotely digital.
Other than the digit he has up his jacksy that is.
He is a firm supporter of the European 'Right to be forgotten' so perhaps this is his way of achieving that, if you have never had a presence on the interweb; there is nothing to remember.
Meanwhile over here in Ireland the state owned power distribution company ESB which owns the power lines overhead wires and ducts that connect to every building in the country got approval to enter a joint venture with Vodafone to build out FTTH mostly in smaller towns, villages and also outskirts of cities. They're avoiding areas with extensive cable broadband tho. They're also testing it in ribbon developments (Ireland has a lot of housing that's not in villages and is genuinely very low density and scattered)
The European Commission didn't take long to grant approval but it's just an interesting way of getting FTTH into non core areas at reasonable cost using existing and publically owned physical infrastructure to carry the fibres.
It's also going to be open to wholesale access for other telcos.
Fingers crossed we see more of this around Europe. I think we're obsessed with the notion that broadband needs to come from something built on top of PSTN infrastructure. There are lots of alternative ways of getting fibre into homes without ripping up roads and costing a fortune.
I'm also concerned when it comes to rural broadband that the European Commission understands that European patterns of housing development aren't remotely uniform across all EU countries.
Some have tightly planned, high density small towns and apartment type living others like Ireland, parts of the Nordic countries, parts of Britain and even rural France are much more scattered and tend to have individual homes that may not be in anything other than a vague cluster.
I think in the past the commission forgot that there are stark differences.
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