Mobile ops to pay for universal service

THE UK's Communications minister Lord Carter is considering widening the burden of Universal Service Obligation (USO) – a requirement to provide everyone with a phone – beyond just entrenched Telco, BT.

The mobile phone companies might be asked to stump up some money towards the cost of catering for the more obscure nooks and crannies of these Fair Isles.

Interestingly, one report even named an MVNO – Virgin Mobile – as a likely victim so the Tescos of this world might not be safe either.

This could well be great news for country dwellers who presently have no chance of getting fixed broadband. A mobile operator could be forced to offer 3G/HSDPA instead. Plus they'd be able to receive calls on their mobiles far more easily.

Significantly, Ofcom (presumably when Carter was still in charge of it) estimated the cost to BT of USO was between £57 million and £74 million a year. However, Ofcom also reckoned that promoting its brand on payphones saved £59-64 million.

Somehow the INQ doesn't believe any other organisation would pay that much for having its brand plastered all over a public edifice which regularly gets vandalised at the weekends even in sleepy Surrey.

The most curious reported comment is that BT isn't sure that mobile broadband is up to the job of providing rural areas with high speed Net access. Oh, really?

Strange, then that this INQ hack has a fixed broadband link which struggles to provide more than 0.5 Mbps when it is quite feasible to get 3-4 Mbps out of the 7.2 Mbps HSDPA networks which Vodafone already provides in some areas.

And that figure of 3-4 Mbps comes from 3 UK's CEO, Kevin Russell, who was being realistic about actual achievable throughput speeds.

There was another unbelievable comment made about Lord Carter's plans. Namely that BT might "rip out" those parts of its copper network which were located in uneconomic areas.

The INQ doesn't think so. It remembers the military admitting that it had the ability to take over the old Prestel network in a time of war precisely because BT's network covered the remote (and presumably un-nuked) bits of Britain.

So... no ripping out, then. µ

L'Inq
The Thunderer