by Michael Norton (POST)

Over the last 2 years, the debate on an 'information superhighway' has spread from the USA to most industrial nations, the EU, and even the global G7 agenda. The UK is no exception, and there has been much public debate over the opportunities and threats posed by the new convergence of computer and communications technologies; the Government has launched a number of initiatives, and opposition parties have also developed their own policies on the form a UK National Information Infrastructure should take. Much of this will parallel similar debates in other countries, but there are some areas where the UK position is unusual or even unique. This note will try and bring out these areas.

Background

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) already account for a market worth £48B in the UK, and the UK is the fifth largest producer of ICT equipment in the world and the fourth largest user - there is an adverse balance of trade of £5B in this sector. These technologies are already leading to a globalisation of the economy but the power of communications networks, computers, 'intelligent' televisions, all using digital technology, also promises to affect many other aspects of our lives. Multimedia entertainment, information services, interactive services (e.g. videophones, teleshopping, telebanking) and video-on-demand (VOD) are but some of the applications already advanced. The growth of the Internet as a 'prototype' global information infrastructure (GII) shows how rapidly (and unpredictably) such developments can proceed. Whole new companies and 'industries' can emerge, but so too can threats to privacy or culture. In view of the mix of opportunity and threat, there is much interest in how these developments should be applied, encouraged or controlled by Government.

Current Points of Controversy

National Visions

In the UK there is some debate over the primary purpose of a national information infrastructure (NII). At the most basic level, the NII contributes to national economic and technological competitiveness, and provides a tool to improve healthcare, education, training and the like. Some however see the NII as catalysing much more fundamental changes.

For instance: 'The dawn of the information age' vision talks of a transformation from the industrial to the information age, causing as substantial a change in society as the move from an agricultural to an industrial society - transport replaced by virtual presence; shopping centres replaced by teleshopping; tele- (or dispersed) working leaving office and high street property vacant; remote courses at universities the norm; production workers replaced by 'knowledge workers'.

Re-inventing government through new ways of delivering services, increasing public access to government information, enabling the public to express its views by electronic(E)-mail; allowing public participation in decisions on specific issues (via electronic 'referenda'); shifts of power from national to local/regional level.

Wide and unintended social and political impacts, include the growth of single-issue politics enabled via ICTs, replacement of human physical contact by electronic means, threats to cultural identities and the erosion of the nation state, undermining of national 'contents' laws (e.g. on pornography), threats to the integrity and status of public service broadcasting and an increase in inequality between those able to benefit from the NII and those excluded on the basis of knowledge, education or income.

There is thus a debate over the general role of government policy - whether it should be primarily economic in attempting to maximise wealth creation - in which case the main focus needs to be on strengthening UK-based manufacturers and providers of equipment, software, network services, multimedia products, etc., and on maintaining a favourable climate for inward investment. Alternatively the national vision could be more concerned with societal and cultural impacts and in harnessing the powers of ICTs to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of education and training, increase the capacity/manage the demand for transport, improve health service efficiency and help public participation in the democratic system. Inevitably, with the example of Vice-President Gore's leadership role in the USA as an example, questions are always asked "who is the UK equivalent of Al Gore?". It looks increasingly likely that the lead will be given clearly to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).

The Technological Options for the NII

The UK has been unique in the degree to which it has encouraged competition in telecommunications. The privatisation of British Telecom and the creation of competition in the form of another national telephone company (Mercury) was followed by a regulatory regime which restricted the ability of public telephone operators to compete in the emerging cable TV industry, while cable companies were allowed to compete in telephony over their own networks. The result of this regulatory 'asymmetry' has been that the UK has seen large investments in infrastructure in recent years - by the PTOs, the cable companies and other players (£6B will be invested in 1995). As a result, many key components of a NII's infrastructure already exist. The optical fibre network used by the main PTOs forms the 'backbone' of a NII, although the local telephony loop remains largely based on 'narrowband' copper wiring. Local entertainment networks are growing based on a mix of fibre and coaxial cable - these provide predominantly a one-way broadband connection, but 2-way interactivity is set to grow rapidly and will lead to at least some 'regional IIs'. The use of radio is extending from mobile phones to possible local distribution in rural cable franchises or competition in the local loop for telephony. Consequently, the current UK infrastructure is a mosaic of different technologies and owners. In some local networks, full broadband capability to the home is imminent; in others, little has changed and telecommunications still consists of a single analogue service.

How does this current picture mesh with the requirements of a NII? This is often defined as providing two-way operation, broadband capacity (in technical terms - 2 Mbits/s or more) and near-universal provision across the nation. It used to be thought that 2-way broadband links had to be optical fibre and therefore achieving the NII was the conceptually simple (if expensive) matter of connecting fibre to every home. But the situation is now much more complicated due to advances in technology, which threaten to turn on their heads some of the previously-accepted technological paradigms. The capacity of the traditional 'copper pair' telephone connection is being radically increased, the abilities of coaxial cable TV connections to support interactivity is changing rapidly, mobile communications are expanding at the same time as the requirements for many 'broadband' services are shrinking through digital compression etc.

There is thus a good argument that a fully functional NII can be achieved with relatively modest enhancements to existing infrastructures, or even that the NII already exists because current networks can provide any informational service for which there is a known demand. Reaching a consensus on the necessary performance characteristics of the NII is vital because the investment costs envisaged for a truly high-performance NII are huge, and there will be severe penalties if investment in the NII is wrongly judged. Providing infrastructure too far ahead of consumer demand for the increased 'bandwidth' would be a poor investment; failure to provide infrastructure in phase with developing services and demand would create a critical stumbling block, passing the advantage to companies in countries where the infrastructure supports such services.

The Regulatory Environment

UK regulatory policy with its emphasis on restricting the ability of PTOs to broadcast entertainment has been the subject of much controversy. The Government maintains that the current rules will stay until 2001, while the Labour Party would progressively relax these over the next 5 years. The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) recent analysis suggests that regulatory regimes which favour competition in physical infrastructure over competition in innovative services may have disadvantages in the future, and suggests that the regulatory emphasis could be shifted from competition in physical infrastructure to competition on services, leaving the market players to decide whether to construct duplicate infrastructure, share the investment or reach some form of common carrier agreement.

With the current fragmentation and heterogeneity in the capability and coverage of UK networks, interconnection and interoperability between the different networks are essential if there is to be any national element to broadband infrastructure. In this context, a consensus has yet to be reached over whether more emphasis needs to be given to interconnectivity performance standards in licensing operators or to encouraging the development of the open network - where any service can be offered by any provider over any network to any customer.

NII Public Services

Increasingly, the greatest limiting factor to NII deployment is viewed as the demand for the services carried over it, and relying purely on a growing consumer market to 'pull through' improvements in the infrastructure may be an uncertain and slow process. There is a wide consensus therefore that there is an important role for Government in delivering public services over the NII to:

- help public familiarity with the technology,

- provide a model for universal access,

- increase levels of confidence and investment by information service providers.

There is thus much debate on how far and fast Government should move in the following areas:

1. Government procurement, where the role of Government as a major purchaser of goods and services offers the potential to use electronic data interchange, E-mail and other applications.

2. Electronic delivery of Government services - this can include information on services (e.g. electronic delivery of forms), electronic submission of data (e.g. for tax returns), even amending details electronically (e.g. changing vehicle licence details).

3. Access to Government information. Considerable amounts of information are now available through the "open.gov.UK" site on the WorldWide Web, and use is growing rapidly (some 40-50,000 enquiries each week).

4. Existing advanced networks such as SuperJANET provide a testbed for NII applications, and their use could be encouraged by extending the networks (e.g. to schools).

5. Test-beds for service development in the Public Sector - better infrastructure in the National Health Service will allow telemedicine to make better use of scarce or distant expertise, personal health information systems, or just rapid records exchange across Europe. The Department for Education is consulting on cost-effective ways in which education might benefit from broadband communications, and the Government has launched a 'Schools on-line' initiative which will connect some 50 schools to the Internet.

6. Libraries could provide sites for 'Information kiosks' or computer terminals to raise public awareness and interest in the NII, and also ensure access for those lacking their own connection.

Universal Provision

There are concerns over the possible separation of society into information 'haves' and 'have nots', and this raises challenges in re-defining the universal service provision of telephony to apply to new interactive services. At present, the competitive nature of the UK market is causing the initial infrastructure development and upgrading to concentrate on areas with lower installation costs and larger populations. The regulations have however been modified to make it more attractive to connect services to rural areas, by allowing a single infrastructure to carry all services and also the use of radio.

However whether there should be a regulatory requirement for 'universal service' is still a matter of debate. The current obligation for telephony is that services should be available to all at a standard tariff regardless of location. Even this has not avoided telephony takeup being limited in areas of economic and social deprivation (e.g. in one area of Newcastle only 26 % of households have a phone, with the elderly particularly poorly equipped), and such disparities suggest that a simplistic extension of the concept of universal access to all multimedia services would have little relevance. It may thus be necessary to determine which services (if any) are sufficiently important to social needs to warrant some form of universal access provision and which (e.g. entertainment) can be left to the market to provide on purely commercial considerations. It may be that a policy of access via public libraries and other public bodies would provide some access to all, while the market-place still relied on willingness to pay for connections to homes and business.

Latest Policy Actions

The state of play at the end of May was described in the POST report on Information Superhighways (see bibliographic data), but there have been some recent developments. The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee has started an inquiry into UK policy on Information Superhighways. The Government has also announced an 'Information Society Initiative', which will be published later in 1995.

Bibliographic data

Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (ed.): Information "Superhighways": the UK National Information Infrastructure. London, May 1995. ISBN 1-897941-80-3.

Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (ed.): The UK National Information Infrastructure. POST Report Summary, London, May 1995 (4 pages).

Ordering information

POST reports can be ordered from:

The Parliamentary Bookshop
12 Bridge Street, London SW1A 2JX
Tel.: + 44-171/219-3890,
Fax: + 44-171/219-3866

POST Report Summaries or Technical Notes are available from POST (extension 2840); copies can also be obtained on request from ITAS.

Dr. Michael Norton, Director
Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology House of Commons
7 Millbank, London SW 1P 3JA
Tel.: +44 171 219-2840