And the band played...
Sayeth she.... "It’s worth remembering why that happened – because Ofcom made the “access” network – the copper to peoples’ homes – open to different providers. That led to competition which drove down prices as well as spurring investment in equipment and new service bundles."
Oh aye? Did it? Really? - And that's the official Stadt-approved verision of history we're all safe to regurgitate is it?
It wasn't that part of something that my parents and grandparents and great-grandparents generations built and fought for, and that I was due to inherit partial ownership of that was stripped away and given away to corporate fat-cats who then proceded to carve the good bits off leaving only the bare bones and some rotting flesh which they continue to suck the life out of? - Because having lived through the period that's actually what I remember...
And I'm not sure that more than three decades on I should be all that impressed by the sub-zero-point-five-meg broadband (average about 0.4 downlink) I have in a location that is within sight of Edinburgh Castle and the Forth Bridges (i.e. NOT a particularly rural or remote area) ... Or the cost of calls... Or anything else much about the raggle-taggle collection of two-bit parasites I've the 'choice' of doing 'business' with if I want to keep a basic essential service...
Personally I don't struggle "to imagine life without megabit connectivity"... That's just reality and is likely to remain so until I move somewhere else. And it strikes me that the main reason for this is the infrastructure has been pretty-much left to rot. - But then why wouldn't it be really? When the main purpose of 'business' is to extract as much as possible from a cash-cow customer base whilst minimising the cost of doing so in order the channel profits into the pockets of a few.
Increasing the number of sharks that infest these shallow and restricted waters isn't going to improve or change that...
As for the self-serving rhetoric of Ms Onwurah in respect of the current government's ill-considered and undoubted failures... The reality is that the Labour party she serves will do nothing different. If she is (for instance) really concerned about the plight of benefit claimants unable to access all-online services, then why isn't she arguing for basic core-provision to all households at little or no cost? Something similar stands if she's concerend about the connectivity of small businesses (and by that I mean the Butcher the Baker and the Candle-Stick Maker as opposed to the government/politico definition of a 'small business' which is turnover exceeding £1.6Million!).
Why isn't she arguing for a state provider that operates a limited basic service at minimal cost on a not-for-profit basis? - Let the 'commercial' companies provide the high end stuff and help subsidise the bare bones... Rhetorical questions of course!
With not a fag-paper's distance between 'shadow' and 'government' ministers it's unsurprising no-one admits that adding the 'overhead' of profit to a service, and then making that a priority over providing the service itself doesn't serve the best-interests of the end user... At least not where the service in question is an essential one and the infrastructure an effective monopoly. And I'm fairly certain that she is not so stupid as to imagine that at a basic level, core national infrastructure can ever be anything other than monopolistic in nature.
In truth "Labour’s commitment to universal broadband for all by 2012" was little more than a few good lunches for selected well-connected stuffed shirts, and is nothing to mourn...
Opening up 'markets' for essential services is quite a different thing from throwing service users to the wolves. When our infrastructure was sold from under us, it was supposed to be up to these 'private companies' to improve upon it and invest... Now that this hasn't really happened governments are basically proposing pouring a little more gravy from the public purse onto those old bones to keep them tasty - but that won't alter the fact that profits come before the service! Or that those profits are largely filling the pockets of the fat-cat public-school cronies.
Frankly Ms Onwurah seems simply to be bemoaning the fact that the entire gravy boat was diverted to BT instead of her particular favourite group of cronies... And that she doesn't have her hand on the spoon... If it were otherwise she'd be arguing to bring the main network under public ownership, charging the private telecoms companies healthy commercial rates to access it, and channelling the profits back 100% into the research and development of that network.
But then that might be a bit 'Socialist' for the 'old boys' and 'gels' of the Labour party...
The past 35 years seem to have seen every social advance that was achieved in the previous 35 years (and beyond) undone. Abdication of responsibility and asset stripping for transient gain seems to be what has defined politics over that period... And it matters not what shade of rogue sits in the big chair. - Political football is a game of sheer unmitigated dishonesty. And the first division is inhabited by some of the most untrustworthy people walking the earth today...
I'd remind the editors of "The Channel" then of that old geek-beloved quote about there being some games where the only winning move is not to play... And suggest that the next time it's offered a skewed-to-buggery piece by some self-serving self-aggrandising political animal they pass on it, and serve up something else. - Maybe something written by someone with sufficient grasp of technical matters that we might reasonably think them capable of fitting a plug to a toaster!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
