It should be no surprise to anyone to hear again from me that I regard Sweden as one of (if not the) most advanced countries in the world in terms of OPLAN development and deployment.  As is always the case, being ‘first’ sometimes carries its own penalties and Stokab, the open access fibre network in Stockholm which led the world by being 'first' over ten years ago, has certainly had some hurdles to overcome since then.  But last week I was in Stockholm with various supporters of the OPLAN Foundation and was impressed.  Here is something of what is going on.

Our good friend and OPLAN supporter, Jari Aho is currently working with Acreo which is, without doubt, one of the world’s leading independent laboratories and test beds for the photonics and communications sector.  The Acreo National Broadband Testbed has been created as an open access platform for the development of tomorrow’s cost-effective broadband communication solutions compatible with the idea of the network convergence, i.e. distribution of Internet, telephony and TV over the same network infrastructure.  In accordance with OPLAN principles, all end users on the network have an opportunity to selectively choose from all services available in the network.   Jari has been involved in co-ordinating the development of what is called the BaseBox Environment.  This is truly impressive as it is hardware independent and affords access to all IP services via an ordinary television set.  This is surely one of the essential building blocks of an open access future.

But the development tools for local open access services, is no less the concern of our friends in Sweden.  The e-Centret initiative located in Vällingby, a suburb of Stockholm, is breaking new ground in the development of concepts and tools for communities to use to enhance their local connectivity and ‘conversation’ – providing of course that they have access to an OPLAN.

But there are some potential clouds on the horizon in Sweden resulting from their vanguard position. In February 2007, the Swedish Regulator (PTS) published a 164-page document outlining future national broadband strategy.  I have to admint that with a zero knowledge of the Swedish language, I have had to rely upon the English summary of this document (PTS-ER-2007:7).  One section in particular caught my eye:

“In the opinion of PTS, municipal authorities that currently own broadband operations in areas where the commercial rollout of future-proofed broadband infrastructure has been carried out or if possible should consider disposing of such operations, or alternatively, taking special measures to ensure that competition is not distorted.”

Now I could write a book on this seemingly sensible and innocuous statement but rather let me make two important points.   The aim of ensuring that, “…competition is not distorted” is one which is very dear to my heart.  But it is a bit rich to talk about competition not being distorted in the telecoms sector when, far from having free and open competition based around the end-user supply and demand of this or that technological innovation, we have a global cartel of now privatized (but formerly state-created) monopolies (PTTs) and a breed of look-alike, vertically integrated service operator competitors.  Many if not all of the problems and dilemmas facing the world today, as it races to reap the prizes of the broadband age, result entirely from a generation of sector specific regulation which has horribly distorted competition and artificially preserved the life of otherwise obsolete business models.

But to the main point that PTS is making – namely that new OPLAN infrastructure should not be owned and operated by the public sector.  Again, I am entirely in agreement and have long been concerned that the direct involvement of municipalities in the construction of local broadband infrastructure was in danger of becoming a back-door to re-nationalization or state control.   That would be foolish and a very costly mistake. 
However, now that PTS is advocating that “municipal authorities that currently own broadband operations in areas … should consider disposing of such operations”, the critical question becomes, “On what basis and against what criteria should these assets be sold?    The quick and easy answer would appear to be, “sell to the highest bidder”.    But the highest bidder is, by definition, the one who has calculated a strategy for extracting more ‘value’ from the assets for themselves than anyone else has.   This is the very opposite of what the local community wants – they are anxious to ensure that the maximum long term value and benefit of these new broadband assets, devolve to themselves -  as users, working, living and playing in a community that is enhanced by an OPLAN.

As cities and communities around Sweden respond to the call of PTS to ‘divest’ their broadband infrastructure, it will be interesting to see whether they mortgage the future by simply selling to the highest bidder.   That would be a tragedy and set back the cause of OPLANs immeasurably.  But as the deck chairs on the sinking telco-titanic are being shuffled with senseless M&A activity, I can already envisage more than one foreign incumbent thinking about what could be done with such acquisitions!  Caveat Sweden!