Ed Vaizey tells me superfast broadband is 'on time and under budget'. I - and many UK citizens - beg to differ
Lies, damned lies, statistics etc.
On Monday this week, minister of state for culture and the digital economy, Ed Vaizey, took to Twitter to urge the public to supply ideas for what he's dubbing "the next frontier in the UK's digital revolution".
Yes, Vaizey wants your feedback on how the UK can move forward as the "tech nation" it has now apparently become, and he wants you to contribute to the "digital strategy for the digital economy".
More buzzwords follow, but you get the general idea.
We live in a country full of creative, dynamic companies who often just require the basics of a good communications network to thrive, possibly even growing to become national or even international concerns. We can buzzphrase all we like, but I think it's important to get this simple element in place before we start collectively trumpeting any other fancy new ideas.
Vaizey's response was to tweet back:
Simple as that, is it? Only in the world of politics, Ed. Tick box, move on, find other ways to keep the public profile up, am I right?
For a start, what's been delivered is nowhere near on time anyway, seeing as the current completion date of 2020 slipped first from 2015, then 2018. But I've banged on about this before.
The heart of the matter is that the government statistics - whatever they be on a given week - always sound far more impressive than the reality for many a small business owner, or a large amount of consumers for that matter.
Back in August 2015, when Vaizey was on Radio 4 boasting of the government's likelihood of hitting its 95 per cent superfast broadband rollout by 2017, we covered the flipside of that argument: well-populated areas of the country including Lancaster and even Pimlico in central London technically have the infrastructure, but coverage is patchy. Meanwhile half of the UK landmass will still lack high speed broadband, and the speed of the new services will be underwhelming when compared to those in other countries.
Ed Vaizey, whose responsibility in digital is to provide the UK's citizens with functional high speed internet, responded thus:
What more do you need to say? Vaizey will only debate around statistics - his preferred statistics - and not testimony from those who make up the other statistics, such as these people:
Next I tried citing one of Vaizey's party's own MPs, Matt Warman, Conservative MP for Boston and Skegness and also - fittingly, in terms of actually knowing something about technology - former technology editor at The Daily Telegraph. In the House of Commons back in October 2015, he cited "variations in effectiveness" in the rollout of fixed and mobile superfast broadband. These are so serious, said Warman, that a "not-spot summit" should be called to find ways to tackle the issue.
Mark Field, Conservative MP for Cities of London and Westminster, continued the discussion, saying he wished to "put on record the concerns that many of us have, even in the centre of this capital city, here in central London, where there are major problems with superfast broadband".
Vaizey's response when I pointed this out? "Anecdotes don't cut it." Even anecdotes from your own party, Ed? Hey, you said it, not me.
Field also issued a reminder of "the importance of ensuring that we have as much competition as possible to put BT and Virgin Media on their mettle to make sure that we get the improvements for which [Warman] is so passionately making the case".
BT has been investigated by Ofcom after Vodafone complained the company - granted sole rights in many places to the fast broadband rollout by the government of which Vaizey is a part - has been fiddling its installation figures. With these sorts of allegations flying around, how accurate is Vaizey's 90 per cent coverage statistic anyway?
BT's called it a "very detailed contractual dispute" with Vodafone, but beyond allegedly fiddling the figures I - and a large number of other broadband users - have an even bigger bone to pick with BT and the government.
This, of course, is the old fibre to the home (FTTH) versus fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) debate.
BT is contracted only to get the fibre to your local cabinet. After that, whatever rotting 1940s copper that lies in state between the box and your house is entirely your own problem. It doesn't affect Vaizey's precious statistic but it doesn't mean you'll have any internet connection either.
As my Twitter feed filled up with broadband users willing to "be statistics" for my case, one of the only voices who came to Vaizey's defence was BT's press officer. Funny, that.
Much of the work Computing does is in talking directly to customers and end users of technology solutions in order to gather unbiased, experiential points of view on a service to enable us draw our own conclusions, and help our readers draw theirs.
So while I'm grateful to Vaizey for jumping in to the debate, I'd be inclined to pay more attention to a customer in a fast broadband catchment zone who experiences 1,000 cut-offs a day and is not having this issue resolved. I'd also rather hear from the remaining 10 per cent of the population who - as Warman alluded - still feel so utterly outside the status quo in terms of high speed connectivity they have not yet come even close to conceptualising how to join the "digital economy" Vaizey insists he's already built.
Our minister of state for culture and the digital economy might want to heed the wise words of his 19th century Tory colleague - prime minister George Canning:
"I can prove anything by statistics except the truth."