Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

The politics of broadband

A couple of weeks ago I was alerted to the fact that Ian Liddell-Grainger, Conservative MP for Bridgwater in Somerset was presenting a ten-minute-rule bill in the House of Commons on the subject of rural broadband. He thinks that tax breaks for installers of broadband networks would be a good idea, and I agree with him.

For those who don't know, a ten-minute rule bill is most often used as a means for Members to express an opinion or to gain publicity. They stand little chance of becoming law without Governmental support.

Now that Hansard from that day is available, I've gone back to take another look at what he said to see if he really dropped some of the clangers which I thought he did when I watched the speech on the BBC's Commons feed. The official transcript of Liddell-Grainger's speech is right here. Let's take a look at a few choice quotes, bearing in mind that Members are allowed to check transcripts of their speeches for accuracy and errors before publication:

"I notice that the Prime Minister's own website—for those who do not know, it is pm.gov.uk—now carries a range of extremely well made and informative propaganda films. The only trouble is that even at 512 kilobytes per second of British broadband, we still have to struggle to watch those movies in a tiny window screen the size of a postage stamp." - Well, I regularly watch 256kbps streams from the BBC's broadband service and they come in at a pretty decent resolution. Even running my monitors at 1280x1024 they're still a decent size, and while not broadcast quality, they're perfectly watchable. Don't forget that "television quality" is actually quite a low benchmark to aim for - broadcast TV has resolutions far below that of the average computer monitor.

"In Japan and parts of America, broadband is really fast— 4 megabytes per second. That means that a computer can be used to watch a full-length movie in very high quality indeed, just like a television. That makes Britain's best broadband resemble Mickey Mouse, but then it is completely different. It is run on fibre optics, not old-fashioned copper cable. Unfortunately, it costs an arm and a leg to install, but companies and private users sign up willingly and pay on the nail, because it really works." - Where do I start here? Do I start with the "I was told they have this in America" assumption which conveniently forgets that broadband access in the US is often hard to come by outside metropolitan areas unless it's, say, via satellite, which has its own set of technical problems? Do I point out that broadband access at speeds of up to 2 or even 4Mbps is readily available across large swathes of the UK, and certainly in the same kind of areas which would have access to such things in the USA? Do I point out that broadband in the USA is often slower than services which are available here? And do I point out that all these speeds are available over old-fashioned copper line pairs without running a fibre local loop? I really don't know. Finally, I think I'll just let the "four megabytes per second" claim slide as obvious unit confusion. Life's too short, you know?

"Broadband can be 10 times faster than an ordinary phone line, but frankly, that is not actually very quick. The technology for British broadband is known as asymmetric digital subscriber line. To many people, it is a lot better than nothing at all, but ADSL still stands for "another disappointingly slow link"." - Come now, Sir. I know you desperately wanted to get the bad joke in about what ADSL stands for, but at least employ a fact-checker next time. Available technologies for end-user broadband Internet access in the UK include ADSL (up to 4Mbps or possibly more), cable TV-provided links (up to 3Mbps) and, in some areas, wireless access at various speeds.

"It does not have to be this way. Fibre optics is the answer, and that technology will eventually come. [...]" - Right now, I'd say that wireless technologies and community broadband initiatives are the answer for rural communities who are either not yet enabled for ADSL or too far from exchanges for ADSL to be possible. Work on the regulatory framework surrounding such things (a good model would be the "self-help" TV relay scheme which has been a great success) and assistance for communities looking to connect themselves up would probably deliver better and faster results than crossing your fingers, providing a bit of a tax break and relying on the benevolence of the telecomms companies to come up with the goods. Fibre to the kerb is hardly happening even in big cities, so it's going to be a really long time until farmhouses on Exmoor get such a thing. Broadband technology right now does not require fibre to achieve multimegabit speeds.

I think I can see what happened here. Rural MP got demands from constituents for broadband access. Corresponded a bit with BT who complained about how much it would cost them to provide ADSL to the whole country and pointed out how this would require cross-subsidisation from their more urban customer base to provide. Asked what Parliament could do, was told "tax breaks, please!" and worked on the assumption that that would make BT happy. Of course it would - major corporations love tax breaks.

Parliamentarians should really seek independent technical advice before making fools of themselves in this way. While I'm sure that Mr Liddell-Grainger's aims were entirely honourable and well meant, he undermined himself fatally by demonstrating a fundamental lack of understanding of the subject he was talking about as well as a serious lack of research. That's a shame, not to mention a missed opportunity.

Footnote added on December 2 2004: It's come to my attention since writing this piece that it's been picked up and used in ways which I would not agree with. Just in case a clarification's necessary despite it being hopefully fairly clear from the article itself, I don't wish to imply any form of incompetence on Mr Liddell-Grainger's part as far as his parliamentary and constituency duties are concerned. The fact that he took the time to prepare this bill in the first place is something which should be commended. My reason for writing the above was to discuss a few technical errors in his speech, not to lambast him for being concerned about the important issue of rural broadband in the first place. The digital divide is pretty wide even in the UK, and even wider in the developing world, and increasing access to the kind of communications and information resources that many of us take completely for granted is a very worthy cause indeed.

Posted by mpk at May 21, 2004 11:50 AM | TrackBack