Three things engaged my attention yesterday.  The most important was the informal gathering of the working group on Broadband within the EUROCITIES Knowledge Society Forum -TeleCities, to which I had been invited.  Meeting in Brussels it was one of, if not the only, euro-gathering where the heat of the room temperature outstripped the heat of the discussion!  Indeed, it was a remarkably common-minded gathering of officials from towns and cities across the EU who were united in their desire to see their citizens benefit from an open public local access network or in some cases, were already deriving the benefits of such an OPLAN.

The focus of the meeting was the European Commission’s Review of the Regulatory Framework for Electronic Communications and the input to the consultation on this which the TeleCities group and its constituent members would in due course be making.  The aim of such a submission being to persuade the Commission of the immense potential benefit to EU citizens of an open access strategy and the ‘unforeseeable’ social and economic benefit which such an approach might yield.

The meeting had the benefit of a senior EU official attending for part of the time, to outline the process and principles behind this major review.  Two things struck me about this.  Firstly, the very ‘framework’ itself is crafted and drafted and embedded in the old paradigm - heavily influenced by listening to powerful vested interests and incumbents.   The EU Commission constantly stresses that it is big on listening.   Any institution with such big ears – needs to find big voices to fill them.  And the telecoms and cable TV sector sure have big voices!  Secondly, the framework explicitly states that it will pursue an ‘evolutionary rather than revolutionary’ approach – despite also claiming that it is ‘technology neutral’.   If that isn’t a case of trying to make omelettes without cracking eggs – I don’t know what is!

If citizens (in the EU or elsewhere in the world) are left free within the cities and communities to adopt and deploy the new digital technologies of abundance as they and they alone opt, then it will most certainly have a revolutionary impact.  As with any revolution, there will inevitably be some from the old regime’ that will be ‘revoluted’ out of existence.   To insist on an ‘evolutionary’ approach is to be anything but technology neutral!

Which, together with the thought of omelettes, brings me to Page 8 of the Financial Times of the same day, Tuesday July 4th 2006.  In the Business Life section, there is an article entitled “We are no longer going to be unloved” which features Stephen Burch – the new CEO of NTL which, now that it has acquired Virgin Mobile, is about to be re-born and renamed as ‘Virgin xsomethingx’.

My suggestion for the new enterprise is “Virgin on the Impossible”.   Mr Burch thinks that he will be able to capture the UK end user by way of some all-conquering quadruple play offering over their ‘closed’ cable network.  In response to a question posed by the FT as to why it was necessary to actually acquire a mobile operator (Virgin Mobile), Mr Burch is reported as responding:

“In bacon and eggs, the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed.  By owning the mobile phone company, we’re completely committed”.

Urghh?   Surely, in bacon and eggs, the pig is dead and the chicken lives to produce another egg??  Anyway, good luck Mr Burch with your closed approach to the world – your shareholders and your customers will soon discover that your business model is fundamentally flawed.  Both will be caused a lot of anguish and frustration before long.

And finally, the third thing that caught my attention yesterday was the news from Singapore that they appear to have the vision, the political will and coherent public policy to ensure that by 2012, all their citizens get an open connection to each other and the rest of the world with a gigabit or more!

Thank goodness we are not relying on the EU (or the US) to show the world the way to the future!