Reporting on the Digital Britain Report - Plus ça Change....

So, we've been a bit busy here at Broadstuff Towers but have had a quick scan of the Final Digital Britain Report. We will reply in more detail in our more in depth analysis next week in our Digital Britain Retort, but headline thoughts are that not a lot has changed from the much criticized interim report, despite a lot of feedback. The Big Lobby Battalions seem to have largely got their way, despite all the work of the Unconferences of the Great Unwashed up and down the land. Our overall impression is that all remains much the same except:

(i) The "how shall we fund the last 1/3rd" question is going to be by a £6 per consumer copper line Next Generation Network Tax (aka a Stealth tax) rather than telling BT/Virgin to fund it as part of their remit, or the government moving money from elsewhere (like public bankers bonusses)

(ii) Continued pandering to the File-sharing Clampdown lobby (or at least an unwillingness to grasp the nettles).

(iii) Raiding the Licence Fee funding to pay for other dodgy "prop em up" plays like local TV news, failing commercial TV models etc. There is a risk of this being a slush fund open season without some form of strategy, as the BBC Trust has rapidly pointed out.

(iv) There are a few oddities, like the digital radio push - odd, as this is a miniscule part of the pie and would cost a fortune to re-equip every household with new radios < ah, light dawns - electronic goods lobby 1, consumer 0...

Much of the execution of all this seemingly falls to Ofcom, a regulator with little skill or experience in provisioning, never mind implementing, such projects. This is not the equivalent of building the motorways, railways or canals, its more equivalent in ambition to taxing the peasants another groat a year to pay the tollbooth keepers to tidy up the cart tracks a bit. (Ovum comes to a similar conclusion)

But to us the real question is what happens to the report - with Lord Carter gone, and the UK in the dog days of a lame duck administration, its hard to believe much will happen this side of an election. (Scarier still in a way if it does, as an exhausted government will have no stomach for a fight with the big lobbies)