Get Carter

"The Digital Britain Report is the Government's strategic vision for ensuring that the UK is at the leading edge of the global digital economy." The full text, in the name of Lord Carter, can be read at http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/broadcasting/6216.aspx . I think it fair to say that this report was not well received by most commentators, with only the proposal to levy a 50p-a-month surcharge on all fixed telephone lines to help pay for bringing next-generation broadband to the whole country triggering popular debate http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/digital-media/5551635/Digital-Britain-will-deliver-slow-broadband-to-those-who-dont-want-it.html
In an article in the Guardian Lord Carter took issue with his many critics http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jun/22/lord-carter-digital-britain

I too was disappointed by this report, however, not because of its recommendations, but because of the way the problem of broadband access was analysed. Typically for this government, a complex social problem was seen as primarily a technological and managerial problem. This was achieved by 'disappearing' what I regard as the most important social fact that should have dominated the project; that 35% of homes with children, have no internet access. Or looked at in another dimension, around a quarter of households earning £11,500, (the government's threshold for a low income) have broadband at home compared with 77% of homes with incomes of £30,000 or more. In Lord Carter's report, this was addressed in a short paragraph "Affordability is addressed in part through the roll-out of the Government's £300m Home Access scheme for low income families. In part the market will increasingly address this issue through the wide availability of new lower cost devices, new schemes for recycling PCs to low-income households or new prepay mobile broadband." Having dismissed the problem, the way was open to concentrate on how to extend geographically the hardware infrastructure of the internet to all parts of the UK, so that all can have access: a technical/managerial exercise.

I think this was a major mistake: as it caused the inquiry to address the wrong problems in the wrong way. I think they should have begun by asking why the vast majority of those 17 million non-users, or 40% of all households, who don't have internet access and could be connected through the existing cable offers do not. That is the real problem here, those who could connect but don't, not those who want to connect but cannot. This is particularly important for families with children, as we are potentially on the cusp of a major new addition to our divided society; in the very near future, parents will be able to interrogate their children's school's computer networks and see in great detail how their child is performing and then on the basis of that detailed information communicate with the teaching staff. In many schools, including primary schools, it is already possible to check homework assignments and download reports. Among children with home access it is already commonplace to use Wikipedia to cut and paste into homework or to 'enrich' extended projects.

In my opinion, it is this social divide, between the connected and the unconnected within cabled Britain that is of much greater importance than getting cable to distant hamlets. Indeed, for that group of non-users who are of particular interest to The Brightside Trust, disadvantaged families with children who are not connected to the internet, I think that their already low percentage of connectivity may well begin to fall even further. I don't have any connection figures on which to base my view, just an observation – that disadvantaged families are increasingly getting rid of their fixed line telephones. Pay-as-you-go mobile phones are becoming the replacement of choice for the whole family, for payment, fashion and independence reasons. Payment, because you can buy credit when you have a little cash, it's not a fixed cost. Fashion, because your mobile is an important accessory to your outfit and image. Independence, especially for children, as they can receive and make calls privately. Perhaps most important for adolescents, they can text. As fixed line phones are abandoned then the cost of a BT or Virgin cable connection just for a broadband connection looks expensive. Hence, I expect the numbers of disadvantaged families with a home internet connection will fall over the coming period, which seems to be the opposite of the government's aspiration. Yes, I know that you can connect to the internet with a mobile phone but that is expensive without a monthly contract and it is complex to transcribe data unless you pay a further premium to use your phone as a modem. For students with a pay-as-you-go mobile and little money, this is not practical for routine homework activity, nor is it practical for a not very interested parent to closely monitor school work. What's worse is that if I'm right, then the government's threat to levy a fixed line surcharge will accelerate the process of dumping fixed line telephones and the government's plan to extend the reach of digital Britain will have had the opposite effect.