Reading Google evangelist Vint Cerf’s blog the other day, with its description of the “next-generation internet”, I wondered just where he keeps those rose-tinted spectacles, and what kind of crystal ball he uses. Certainly not one of those all-seeing, future-revealing palantirs featured in Lord of the Rings. After reaching the end of Vint’s treatise on Web 3.0, I half expected him to say, “the lion shall lay down with the lamb and we will all live happily ever after.”

One of the funnier parts of Vint’s sermon on the mount was this little gem: “A box of washing machine soap will become part of a service as internet-enabled washing machines are managed by web-based services that can configure and activate your washing machine.”

Give me a break ­ so when I load up my machine, I’ll be logging on to the Daz web site to pick the best programme to get out all the sweat and grime from my clothes after a hard day’s toil in the Computing labs? I think not.

However, next-generation applications will at some point require next-generation access and that means optical fibre. But before you start consuming those high-bandwidth applications over the “next web”, you will need to be in one of those areas due to have fibre rolled out.

So it wasn’t much of a surprise when BT announced that it would fund a £1.5bn rollout of fibre ­ but only to those lucky enough to be in the right place. It would probably add another five per cent to the value of your house ­ once the dust
settles on the current economic turbulence.

BT’s move into optical fibre rollouts was probably driven by looking over its hefty shoulder at what some of the smaller carriers such as H2O Networks and Geo were doing. H2O Networks has already rolled out fibre to Bournemouth, with Northampton and Dundee next on the list.

Surveying the state of global fibre rollouts, it looks as if the UK’s aspiration to be a leader in the information economy of the future is stuck on the hard shoulder of the information superhighway.

To address this situation, the government commissioned a report on how the UK should deal with the problem. Francesco Caio recently delivered that report, which concluded that the UK should stop short of a massive splurge of cash from central government and instead encourage the private sector to invest where it saw fit.

The problem is that the private sector wants to be sure of a decent return on investment (ROI) before it commits, and seems unconvinced that Joe Public would put their hands in their pockets to pay to have a fibre connection.

The UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, also believes that firms ought to be allowed a decent return on risky investments and has said that it will put in place a regulatory framework to that end.

But is it that risky? Quocirca communications analyst Rob Bamforth recently said that these new services could be extremely viral. For instance, a new “super” Facebook application, perhaps allowing high-definition video calls across the network, could swamp current network capacity if take-up rocketed. BT’s future cash cow might not lie in rolling out fibre connections, but in backhauling fibre connections that it says it would offer other ISPs wanting to join in. Would Ofcom cull such an animal, or consider it a “decent return”?

A comprehensive optical fibre rollout for all UK citizens is too critical to be left to somebody whose main motive is ROI. If we can dish out billions for nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, the Olympics and bailing out failed banks, surely something like this ­ which would have far more effect on the economic wellbeing of our country ­ needs to be funded properly. Can we afford to gamble with the future competitiveness of the UK in this way? Answers on a postcard.