Former BT CTO slams UK's 'visionless' broadband plans

Government has 'no vision, mission or plans', says Cochrane

The government's lack of a vision, mission or plan in its implementation of broadband is hampering the UK's economy, according to the former CTO of BT, Peter Cochrane (pictured).

In an exclusive interview with Computing, Cochrane explained the importance of broadband to the UK economy and said that by not connecting all areas – rural and urban – the economy would suffer as a consequence.

"The future of any economy is absolutely dependent upon broadband and connectivity and if industry and home workers have not got the capacity to work online anywhere, the UK will be frozen out," he said.

He also criticised the government for a lack of clear goals or a long-term vision to work towards.

"What is the vision, mission and plan of the UK? It doesn't have any of these, and it has no idea what the UK is going to be when we grow up as a nation in the next 20 years.

"If you look at south eastern Asian countries, they have all got five-year planning cycles and know where they want to be in the next 20 years, but we do not have any plans as a country or as a nation; we are randomly walking into the future," he said.

The UK desperately needs a national strategy, Cochrane said.

"The UK used to lead the computer games industry, not anymore – we lost the £3bn industry to Korea because we have no bandwidth or connectivity – so how much more do we want to lose?" he asked.

"The government needs to sit down and put together a business plan for this nation, until we have a vision and a business plan for this nation we will continue to wander around at random, making decisions that make no sense and that are extremely expensive, wasting vast amounts of money," he said.

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Former BT CTO slams UK's 'visionless' broadband plans

Government has 'no vision, mission or plans', says Cochrane

Two days ago, the House of Lords Communications Committee slammed the UK's broadband rollout and called for the government to ensure it closed a "digital divide" between urban and rural areas.

In response, the minister for culture Ed Vaizey , speaking in an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today Programme, suggested that 2Mbit/s broadband would be sufficient for UK citizens and that they would not require faster speeds.

But Cochrane labelled Vaizey's comments as "dumb" and suggested that he does not understand the necessity of broadband.

Although the UK is aiming to have the best broadband network in Europe by 2015, it has been heavily criticised for focusing on implementing fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) as opposed to fibre-to-the-home (FTTH), which is faster, but more expensive.

Cochrane, now an independent analyst, laughed off the suggestion that there is no need for FTTH.

"There is a lot of misinformation – I've heard people ask why the UK needs FTTH, as although it provides 100Mbit/s to the home it ‘only' gives 10Mbit/s upload, but this is a stupid statement," he said.

In May, BT's managing director for next-generation access, Mike Galvin, told Computing that FTTH was not essential and suggested that the FTTC product was good enough for its customers.

Cochrane understood Galvin's position, as the government is not pushing hard enough for FTTH.

"What pressure is BT under to improve the network? Why would it invest in the network?"

"There is only one reason to invest in the network, and that is if BT has got the intelligence to see that it will lower their capital and operational expenditures," he explained.