Q&A: Phil Male - Cable & Wireless worldwide operations director

Digital Britain should do more than encourage people to watch TV

Phil Male, operations director for the worldwide operations division of telecom company Cable & Wireless, has overall responsibility for providing quality managed IP services to large telecoms services customers across the UK, US, continental Europe and Asia.

Male told Computing why he still believes fixed mobile convergence will make waves within the enterprise and why the UK government should focus its Digital Britain plans more on business.

What are your views on Digital Britain?
Phil Male: I think there are two points. First, it's good that as an economic stimulus the government is looking at how to fund growth in a digital Britain. But secondly, there's a disappointment from our perspective because if you've read the draft report it's a very focused on consumer broadband and getting people to watch more TV, which may not be the best way to stimulate economic growth in the UK.

I think it's a bit of an opportunity missed at the moment, in that there's not a lot of effort in there to stimulate proper economic growth in the business space.

How do you see the deployment of optical fibre connectivity in the UK panning out?
I don't think we should be getting too hung up on whether fibre access goes to the kerb, the house or the village. That said, there is a need to stimulate things like education, output and small business startups.

What's your view on the tax on optical fibre, set by the Valuations Office Agency? It's hardly an incentive for firms to roll out next-generation access in the UK is it?
Cable & Wireless would welcome any government initiatives that support operators in delivering broadband to customers, including a reduction in the rate liability associated with providing such services, but I think that's one for the Valuations Office.

How is the Thus acquisition going? And how is the integration of that network into Cable & Wireless's going?
With care, would be the short answer. Thus was acquired for several reasons. It has quite an attractive customer base, and as a business it was starting to grow in its own right, and making inroads into the higher end of the telecoms space. It has quite a spread of fibre in the North – which was a very interesting asset base for Cable & Wireless.

This is a multi-year programme and we're doing this using our in-house team, and on a customer-by-customer basis rather than whole networks. The biggest customer we're migrating across is HSBC, and that's going very well.

Is there any more scope in the UK telecommunications market for further consolidation?
I don't think it's firms with fibre assets that are driving consolidation now, I think it's customer bases and application availability, and it's very difficult to see that happening in the short term. I think if you go down a notch and look at the resellers, I think consolidation there has yet to happen. There are a lot of resellers out there.

What is your view on fixed-mobile convergence? Can you see a business case for it?
We've developed our service to deliver on the needs of large enterprise customers, offering significant cost savings compared with standard mobile. Since we operate a fixed network and mobile network we can guarantee quality of service (QoS) alongside very competitive cost per minute calls as we operate the end-to-end network.

Calls within a company can be particularly attractive due to this capability. Currently industry estimates put 30-50 per cent of all mobile calls originating in the office. This is a major cost that can be managed with FMC and calls terminated at fixed-line rates.

The numbers speak for themselves and especially in an economic environment where every penny counts, FMC will dramatically reduce the cost of running a business.

Are CIOs fearful that the FMC costs will be too much? Or is it the case that they think the technology doesn't work well enough?
Now more than ever CIOs are looking to take costs out of the business. With low capex investment, FMC can transform communications infrastructure, reducing or removing costly, complex legacy equipment and the associated operating costs, as well as making the costs of mobility lower and predictable.

Strip away the technical detail and FMC is actually quite straightforward, so there is no question as to whether it works well. With FMC, your mobile calls use the same network as your data applications and when you step outside the building, the calls are transferred seamlessly to your carrier's national roaming partner’s mobile network. Put simply, FMC will deliver simplicity, reduced costs and increased productivity to customers.