So the European telcos are now jumping on the bandwagon started in the US of crying “foul” to the consequencies of their flawed business models and seeking to charge ‘more’ for delivering high bandwidth content from the likes of Google and Yahoo.  Take for example Mr Kai Uwe Ricke, chief executive of Deutsche Telekom.  He says, “It shouldn’t be the case that infrastructure providers, like Deutsche Telekom are always having to make the investments, while other profit on the back of those”....

So now the equipment vendors are deck-chair shuffling too - great for the lawyers and investment bankers, but according to Frank d'Amelio, Lucent's COO, it is the telco operators that are really calling for this deal!  When asked why mergers in the telecoms equipment industry made sense, he offered the answer, "The customers suggests what the vendors should do ... purchasing power comes with being big".
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I am sitting in the recently redesigned and updated Virgin Clubhouse Lounge at Terminal 3, London Heathrow Airport, waiting for my flight to New York to be called.  This place has everything to relay and revive you before the journey ... any choice of food or drink you can imagine; sumptuously comfortable sofas and recliners; newspapers and publication from around the world and a library lined with real leather bound books; pool table, beuaty parlour, row upon row of locked-down Sony Vaios and a hushed atmosphere that befits a zone of exclusive comfort and pamper.   The only mistake (which the staff seem to have already twigged) is the bottomless buckets of sweets lined up on a counter which, judging by the two manic, hyper-active kids witing to return home that are screaming around them - are loaded with sugar and other incongruous stimulants for this placid place.  A mood-designed lighting scheme throughout and shower-rooms with hot and cold .... and its all FREE, FREE, FREE.  No charge for anything .... except of course, getting onto the Internet!!  For some peculiar reason, Mr Branson has handed that closed monopoly to T-Mobile.  Whether it is he, that great free-wheeling, market driven entrepreneur of the skys or whether it is BAA, his retail-crazed landlord - I am not sure.   But pay you must to use your PC or PDA to access anyone outside this Lounge and pay BIG....

I have for some considerable years been speaking and writing about the forthcoming “mother of all battles” between the telecoms industry as we currently know it, and end users.  The territory over which this battle will take place is what many of us call “the first mile” … or as the network-centric telecoms industry has referred it, “the last mile”....

As a young boy, I enjoyed playing the former.  Its an excellent family game of tactics and observation.  When it comes to the Internet, the latter is also full of tactics and observation but to many it looks like anything BUT a harmless game!   I wonder....