Gordon wants to invest in the broadband infrastructure of the UK by getting fibre to the cabinet. According to the CIO Jury, this has a resounding no-vote from the 12 CIOs asked. However, I believe if Gordon changed the way the money could be spent, he'd get double-bubble for his money.
Nearly 1/3 of housholds still don't have internet access let alone broadband. If the money was put in to enabling those households to get broadband internet access, the cash would pass from the government to the new customers and on in to the ISPs where at least a good proportion of the revenue could be used to re-invest in the broadband backbone. The major ISPs (BT, Carphone & Virgin) are already investing in a fibre network, but all would dearly love more customers and with the additional 1/3 of households coming on-line they'd need to beef up call centres, system capacity, back-haul capacity, etc, etc. All this would lead to new jobs, new capex spend and new opex spend, exactly what is required in this time of economic gloom.
So, not only do the government get their investment in the broadband backbone, they get to have the highest on-line percentage of any country to boot! Double bubble!! What's to lose? Am I wrong?!
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