The politics of fibre

Alongside its annual results, BT announced its plans for an expansion of its investment in fibre earlier today. The clear link between the two is that the cost reductions and greater efficiencies identified in the company’s financial reporting have freed sufficient resources for an acceleration of the investment programme so as to allow a further £1bn to be put into fibre projects, extending the reach to two-thirds of UK homes by 2015.

Current investment plans had envisaged 40% of UK homes being fibred up by 2012: thus, an expansion of 67% in the investment budget brings about the same percentage expansion in the number of homes within the reach of a fibre network at the local level. This is interesting in itself, since cost models predict that fibre investment should become more expensive on a per home basis the further investment travels, although this seems to apply largely only once fibre roll-out has been extended into rural areas, i.e. above about 58% of homes (Figure 1.5).

(Incidentally, the Analysys Mason model looks to remain fairly accurate at this point: it seems to predict that, with an investment of £1.5bn in fibre to the cabinet solutions, BT ought to reach about 46% of homes (compared to the 40% in the company’s plans); while a total investment of £2.5bn ought to see it through to about 72% (compared to ‘around two-thirds’). Either the model is slightly out, and the costs associated with roll-out to particular stages are slightly higher than envisaged; or else BT’s mix of fibre to the cabinet and fibre to the home solutions has raised the cost slightly, since the model is based only on the former. The BBC news report of today’s story identifies that around one in four of all homes envisaged as being covered by fibre by 2015 will have fibre to the home – and, therefore, much faster connection speeds. This would seem to suggest that the Analysys Mason model actually slightly under-estimates the cost of fibre roll-out.)

The announcement of BT’s roll-out plans has clearly been well-timed, given the events of the last seven days; and appears to put BT on the front foot.

Firstly, this takes BT to what we might call the ‘Digital Britain’ point – i.e. the two-thirds of homes that ‘the market’ would identify as being suitable for fibre investment. Taking fibre installation beyond this was intended to be the purpose of the ‘Final Third’ fund, raised by the landline duty, which of course has now been scrapped – and without actual plans for its replacement which are more than mere suggestions.

Secondly, the plans will achieve download speeds of (up to) 40 Mbps. The Tories’ manifesto commitment was to getting ‘a majority’ of UK homes wired to (up to) 100 Mbps connections by 2017. BT’s current plans seem to indicate that, by 2015, only around 17% of UK homes will have download speeds at this level. If the manifesto commitment is to be realisable – though today’s reporting seems to indicate that Digital Britain may well not be a priority for the new government – then plans need to be made for how this is going to be achieved. This is not the same as what also needs to be done to roll-out broadband in rural areas (into the ‘final third’) – which mission also needs to be accomplished – since this 17% seems to leave plenty more homes in urban areas with download speeds of much less than 100 Mbps.

Thirdly, Ian Livingston’s announcement contains a strong caveat: that the plans assume ‘an acceptable environment for investment’. This is clearly critical and is an evident acknowledgement not only that the regulatory environment plays an important role in investment decisions, but also that the change in government brings uncertainties in this area which will need to be settled. Inevitably so. But what matters here is that the announcement of the plans now indicates that the existing environment, both known and in the pipeline, is acceptable in terms of the plans – what is unknown is whether that will change and, if so, what impact that will have on the investment. The caveat is a clear indication that the plans are predicated on at least the continuation of the current regulatory environment (if not its further improvement) and that any deterioration may well lead to a reconsideration of them.

How the government responds will be interesting.

In terms of BT – well, it’s clear that more needs to be done to get Britain faster online so as to realise the benefits of Digital Britain, though the importance in this of a healthy, financially strong BT needs not to be forgotten (as well as that the company is still rebuilding its profitability). It should also be remembered that the expansion of the investment in fibre will be ‘managed within current levels of capital expenditure’ – something which implies cut-backs in expenditure on investment in other areas.

A new statutory duty for Ofcom to promote investment in the communications infrastructure in its approach to regulatory decisions would help enormously right now…

UN launches Broadband Commission

The International Telecommunications Union, an arm of the UN, has set up a Broadband Commission whose aims will be to define strategies for rolling out broadband networks worldwide and to examine the applications for the improvement in the delivery of a wide range of social services.

An impressive list of global private sector business leaders, UN agencies, regulatory bodies and politicians, including the European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes, are to sit on the Commission, which will present findings to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals review summit in September. The Commissioners are intended to provide ‘expert input’ alongside an analysis of the deployment of broadband at all stages of economic development, with the ultimate intention of providing ‘practical recommendations on the possible routes towards the goal of high-speed networks at affordable prices.’

Hamadoun Touré, Secretary-General of the ITU, commented that:

In the 21st century, affordable, ubiquitous broadband networks will be as critical to social and economic prosperity as networks like transport, water and power… Not only does broadband deliver benefits across every sector of society, but it also helps promote social and economic development, and will be key in helping us get the Millennium Development Goals back on track.

There’s nothing much wrong with that, and it helps to reinforce the notion that the developing world does – perhaps controversially – need modems and routers just as much as it needs other basic essentials as a means of delivering the social and economic benefits that will improve life expectancy and the social situation. So, the initiative is welcome, although it is important to emphasise that it needs indeed to look at the full range of ‘possible routes’. Whether decent debate about the range of ways of potentially achieving these goals is likely to ensue from the Commission’s appointments, and the short time-scale for its work to be concluded, is a moot point. Alternative visions than ones based on deregulation and the removal of barriers, and on a centre stage for competition, are both possible and need to be explored if the initiative is to achieve its aims.

everything, everywhere

So, it’s not going to be T-Orange after all, then. T-Mobile and Orange have resisted the temptation of the obvious and have decided to run in a completely different direction, calling their joint venture everything, everywhere – perhaps a slightly hyperbolic name for a mobile company, even if it is the largest one in the UK, and one which appears something of a mouthful in comparison to the available competition (it has more syllables than the three other network operators put together).

Its ‘vision’ includes a single ‘super-network’ giving ‘unsurpassed coverage and capacity’ for customers (though 3 might take issue with this bit), and at a lesser impact on the environment. Few details are as yet available other than that the company will seek to combine both the Orange and T-Mobile networks and, by cutting out duplication, reduce the number of stations and sites that the company uses (which currently stand at some 27,000). Nevertheless, how this network looks, and operates, is a vitally important consideration not least given the terms on which the JV was approved (i.e. the guarantees given to 3; and the sale of spectrum). The company has, however, confirmed that all four of the companies served by the network (including both 3 and Virgin Mobile) will run on a common infrastructure.

The new company claims a customer base of more than 30 million people – ‘over half of the UK adult population’ (I can’t recall the companies trumpeting this sort of statistic while the regulators were looking at the proposed JV: funny, that!) and its press release helpfully breaks these down into pre-paid and contract mobile customers and Orange’s fixed network (the management of which was outsourced last month to BT) – so would seem to incorporate the potential for some double-counting.

The merged company will have 16,500 employees – 2,500 fewer than they had when the JV was announced seven months ago – and is, according to the same report, seeking savings of some £3.5bn by 2014 in shared infrastructure, technology and in the savings resulting from job cuts.

Not everything, everywhere for everyone, then.

PPF index shows a slight slip

The Pensions Protection Fund published the PPF7800 Index today for the end of April, showing the state of health of the 7,400 pension schemes under its supervision.

The Index is currently showing a small net deficit, of £2.2bn, reversing March’s small surplus (£0.3bn). Given the growing turmoil in currency markets during April associated with the financial and economic situation in Greece and other small EU countries, something which was only capped this week with the agreement between EU finance ministers, a drop of the Index back into negative territory is not surprising but the small-scale nature of the drop was a surprise, and a particularly welcome one.

Some 69% of schemes were in deficit this month, more or less the same as the 68.5% in March, which seems to support the view that the picture is, essentially, little changed. Evidently, this remains an uncomfortable proportion of schemes in deficit, even if the overall net balance of assets and liabilities lends the view that the average scheme is not all that much in deficit. The total assets of these schemes reached £913bn, a drop of 0.2% over the month and an increase of 18.2% since April 2009; total liabilities stood at £915bn, a small increase on the month but a drop on the £961bn recorded in April 2009.

During April, the value of both assets and liabilities deteriorated, the latter by more than the former (hence the drop of the net figure into negative territory). Over the year as a whole, rising stock markets have added 16.4% to pension scheme assets, while rising bond yields have added only marginally to liabilities.

So, overall the picture continues to be encouraging, although the change in the actuarial assumptions underpinning the calculation of the Index in October last year continues to affect the figures. Caution remains necessary – pension schemes are far from out of the woods just yet.

Monti report proposes more centralised regulation

In an announcement somewhat overshadowed by EU finance ministers’ agreement on a €500bn package for member states with solvency problems and to provide support to the euro as a currency, as well as in the UK by the will they-won’t they tea dance going on in Whitehall as I write, former European Commissioner Mario Monti has presented a report to current EU President, Jose Manual Barroso, on a new strategy and direction for the EU’s single market.

Monti was commissioned to write the report back in October 2009, and its aim is to motivate a renewed political determination around the concepts of the EU’s single market and to provide a fresh impetus for the principles which underpin it. What seems to be high up in the Commission’s thinking is the need to assess the state of play in the single market in time for the 20th anniversary of its establishment, in 1992, while the context is also clearly rooted in fears for the direction and commercial success of the EU associated with any retreat into economic nationalism arising from national-level responses to the economic and financial crisis. The report will be the basis for a Commission initiative to relaunch the Single Market as a key strategic objective and, following internal discussion, the Commission will emerge with a ‘balanced, broad and fair’ vision of what the single market should look like in the future some time in July.

This is a hugely significant report and the timing of the announcement of the publication could not be worse (though this is unlikely to inhibit a serious discussion in time of the report’s focus). The thrust of the Monti report is that a system of national regulators sees to it that the EU ‘falls short of its commercial promise‘ in the communications and e-commerce areas, and that the response should be for the EU to have stronger powers over national regulators. Some of the conclusions – for example on an EU-wide spectrum licencing regime – look somewhat behind the play given the round of advanced spectrum auctions which have been concluded in the Netherlands and in the Nordic countries, and are currently well underway in Germany. But what looks inescapable is Monti’s views on the need for a revision of regulation in the communications sector so as to create an EU-wide market for electronic and communications and to drive the growth of Europe’s digital economy.

Given the recent conclusion (in 2009) to the last round of revision of telecoms regulation at EU level, the sigh of ‘here we go again’ is equally inescapable. Nevertheless, this is a report that will need serious consideration, both in terms of its political significance as well as in terms of the impact of the measures that it proposes will have on workers in the sector.

Barking 51 BNP 0

Now that‘s what I call a result…

OK, on with the show

Though before we do, some interesting reaction to the overnight events picked up via TIGMOO by Anna Rose at Unison Active, as well as by Tom over at labour and capital.

In what is otherwise, given its timing, likely to be one of my more immediately unread posts in the one year (next week!) that this blog has been functioning, I did find this week that there were some interesting things happening in the world of regulatory broadband policy, both in Australia and in Italy, and in the world of net neutrality, in the US, which reflect some aspects of why the blog exists.

In Australia, the centre-left government has published a A$25m (£15m) report commissioned by McKinsey and KPMG that says, essentially, even if Telstra, the former incumbent, doesn’t decide to throw in its lot with the government’s plans for an initially publicly-owned national broadband network company, NBN Co can still go ahead on its own as a viable commercial entity (see here [registration required; limited viewing time] and, when that runs out, here for the basic news story].

Such a conclusion is really no great surprise, and perhaps its most important function is the practical assistance it will provide the government in its continuing negotiations with Telstra on the folding of its assets into NBN Co (although whether that’s a suitable use of public money is a different matter) – both that and the re-starting of structural separation discussions in the Australian parliament, scheduled for next week. The government’s intention to create a ‘Telstra 2’, having not so long ago sold the last one off to a lot of individual (‘mum and dad’) shareholders, with a long-term intent to do the same thing with NBN Co, is the subject of a lively debate, as the comments in The Australian show.

Meanwhile, a proposal for a super-fast broadband network in Italy was made by Vodafone, Wind and Fastweb (the latter two being existing Italian network operators) in Milan today. La Repubblica originally broke the story on Tuesday (you’ll need to speak Italian or else have a good translator – or else, if you’re quick, see either here and/or here for an English language version). The consortium of three want to spend €2.5bn on building a 100Mbps fibre network in Italy over the next five years – but che sorpresa, they want to build it only in the 15 major towns and cities. At the launch, it was also made clear that, over 5-10 years, the network could be extended in an €8.5bn investment to all towns with more than 20,000 inhabitants (representing around half the Italian population). Former incumbent Telecom Italia, which was invited into the project and which has always welcomed the notion of joint partnerships (provided that it keeps its finger on its existing network), has its own €7bn investment plans over three years but deployment so far has been somewhat relaxed.

Cynicism aside, any investment in high-speed broadband is welcome – but it does need to be part of a nationally- planned advance in fibre installation, and one that extends high speed broadband provision on an equitable basis right throughout the country: to rich and to poor; to urban and to rural; to young and to old. Where the market is allowed to dictate investment in nationally-important infrastructure, the end result can only be inequity, exclusion and a widening of the social and digital divides as a result of the inevitable cherry picking that will occur. Leaving the poor old incumbent to pick up the pieces for the rest is hardly reflective of a level playing field, while the concept of social justice – as well as that of evenly-spread economic development – deserves better treatment.

An interesting parallel between Italy and Australia is also that Agcom, the Italian regulator, has been looking at the creation of a separate, new company responsible for the country’s next generation broadband infrastructure.

Finally, in the US the Federal Communications Commission has made progress with its response to last month’s legal ruling against its sanctioning of Comcast for traffic management policies. I blogged about this here. The danger of the ruling was that an inability of the FCC to take action in this way, because broadband internet access is classed under US regulation law not as a telecoms service but as an information service (and thus subject to a different, lighter regulatory regime), left it unable to guarantee net neutrality – i.e. the freedom of internet users not to be subject to the ‘management’ of their surfing by their ISP. This impasse in turn seemed to threaten the FCC’s ambitious National Broadband Plan.

What the FCC has done, according to the BBC – a bit of a lighter read than the FCC’s own statement – is to develop a ‘third way’ (just like 1997 all over again!) which classifies the ‘transmission component’ of broadband access as a telecommunications service while taking a principled non-intervention approach to much of the rest of broadband access. The Chair of the FCC was at pains to point to the ‘narrow and tailored… cautious’ approach, and the need to overcome the difficulties posed to the National Broadband Plan by the legal decision, but even this limited compromise appears to have left the two Republicans on the FCC behind. Here, the Chair’s view is likely to be supported by the two Democrats, indicating it will thus prevail, but ISPs themselves already appear (according to the BBC report) rather unhappy.

These three highly separate, but highly linked, stories highlight the problems of regulating broadband access both in an environment of seeking control of the technology so that it serves the interest of the people, and in free market situations in which competition is supposed to prevail but which doesn’t necessarily always support the interests of the consumer, both taking place in the context of a neo-liberal dominated world view. You might wonder – just as bond markets opening in the middle of election night, as results are starting to come in, and subsequently with its intermittent results, was thought to be newsworthy as part of the BBC’s online internet coverage – just how we’ve got into this mess.

A lack of strategic thinking is one reason – and it’s clear that only strategic thinking can get us out of it.

Election 2010: use your vote

Will Straw at Left Foot Forward has a fair review of the campaign. And his conclusion is impossible to ignore:

One thing is abundantly clear: whatever you do today, vote.

Not turning out to vote means that the votes of extremists count double. Committed extremists are certain to vote – don’t give them your vote too.

And from a trade union perspective, to add a section missing from Will’s round-up, honourable mentions to the Green Party manifesto (pp. 9-11) – but, of the major parties, only one is likely to have included this in their manifesto:

Modern trade unions are an important part of our society and economy, providing protection and advice for employees, and working for equality and greater fairness in the workplace. We welcome their positive role in encouraging partnership and productivity.

Net traffic predicts hung parliament

Perhaps Alex Salmond should look away now, but traffic to the official internet sites of the three main political parties looks eerily reminiscent both of the share of the vote going to each party, as recorded by recent opinion polls, but is also reflective of recent polling trends – up Labour, down Lib Dems.

Coming soon to you, i.e. in about five years time: Can’t be bothered to vote? Can’t drag yourself down to the polling station? Then let ‘apathy app’, our new app designed to assess your likely voting habits based on your surfing record, put a postal ‘x’ in that box for you…

Britain’s Digital Future II

I’ve now had a chance to listen to The Guardian‘s Tech Weekly podcast I blogged about last week. Unlike some of the comments on the podcast page, which mostly seem to reflect continuing disappointment over the copyright and file sharing aspects of the Digital Economy Act, I thought this was an interesting and reasonably open discussion on the policies of the three main parties towards Digital Britain, underpinned by some thoughtful and articulate comments on the issues and the policies.

The bits on broadband, specifically on how to fund broadband access in rural areas, occur from the 39.17-minute mark and wrap up around 48.50. I learned the following:

– an acknowledgment from Jeremy Hunt, shadow secretary for culture, media and sport, that the market won’t provide for all and that an element of subsidy would be necessary to extend broadband to rural areas. This is not new by itself, but the Tories’ vehicle for this, i.e. using the £200m surplus in the digital switchover portion of the BBC licence fee, was, according to Hunt, supported by the BBC on the grounds that the hungriest consumers of bandwidth were iPlayer users and that the BBC wanted to extend access to iPlayer further. This BBC support for the use in this way of the digital switchover surplus was news to me.

– Stephen Timms, minister for Digital Britain, argued that the switchover money would not be available until 2013 and that doing nothing until then was simply not good enough, while making progress in rural areas demanded investment of £150m per year (i.e. the sums being spoken as being raised by the landline duty). At the same time, conceding the switchover surplus for rural broadband would leave little left for the universal service commitment. Hunt’s reply was that he would rather use the sums which Labour had spoken of to subsidise regional news programmes from ITV for rural broadband instead. So, here we have a Tory spokesman unsympathetic to the notion of the need to subsidise independent sources of regional news – while I also remain unconvinced that the Tories in office would do much towards a universal broadband service at all: having a policy for rural broadband is not the same thing as ensuring that all households in the UK can get access to a minimum broadband service.

– Hunt commented that next generation investment could cost £29bn [apparently, for fibre to the premises solutions right across the UK] and that this was not something that one company [BT] could afford on its own.  He lamented the failure of the Digital Economy Act to do more about encouraging other private sector operators to step forward and said that he wanted ‘Virgin Media to do more; Sky to do more; Carphone Warehouse to use our pilons, telegraph poles, ducts and sewers’ as a way of stimulating a lot more investment in fibre. Of course, there’s nothing to stop any other operator from building out a fibre network and then connecting that with the networks of others to extend coverage. (Except, of course, the need for investment finance and then the obligation to offer that network on a wholesale basis, just like BT has to do. That ‘our’ is an interesting and revealing word, too!)

– Hunt’s reference to Virgin Media having a fibre network which reaches the major towns and cities, and half UK households, whereas BT was the only operator which had the infrastructure to reach rural areas, and that it was ‘madness’ to wait for BT to make that investment as it simply could not afford to do it, seems to me symptomatic of a Tory desire to see BT only as a provider of last resort – that competition will provide in the major areas and that, where it doesn’t, BT will have to provide. So, other operators would be allowed to cherry pick the best areas for their investment, i.e. those which offer the best returns, while leaving to BT alone the prospect of investing in low return areas (and then having to do so on a wholesale basis). I’m extremely unconvinced that this is a sensible, rational approach to getting fibre rolled out across the UK: it leaves far too little in terms of returns for the operator relied upon to undertake the most costly investments (and the only one with sufficient scale to generate the necessary finance). In a situation in which the costs of fibre investment have already been identified as too high for one operator to deal with, it seems completely contrary then to ask that same operator to fund all the unattractive, low return investments. The UK deserves much better joined-up thinking than that.

– ‘Anyone who laid fibre would have an obligation to wholesale the fibre they laid to anyone who wants it’. I’m quoting here because I was quite astounded by what I heard and replayed several times to make sure I got it right. This goes well beyond BT, for which wholesaling obligations as regards fibre investment will inevitably be mandated by Ofcom, while that ‘anyone’ seems on the face of it to encompass, for example, Virgin Media, as well as any other operator which currently does not have SMP (significant market power – only BT and Kingston Communications currently have SMP). On the other hand, it might be argued that there is a strong whiff of ‘in future’ to the quote and, bearing in mind that Virgin Media is expecting to have completed its delivery of superfast broadband right across its network by next year, it may well on this basis be held not to have been caught by the need to respond to such wholesale obligations.

By the way, the programme ended with a comment on the impact on fibre investment of valuation office decisions. This has been well summarised by Computer Weekly and is based on a court case brought by Vtesse, and lost, earlier this year. It had been Tory policy to ‘realign’ business rates charged on fibre networks, although this seemed to lead to a bit of a spat with the Valuation Office Agency and this policy seemed eventually not to make it into the Tories’ Technology Manifesto. Making the cost of fibre essentially cheaper is likely to have some impact on investment decisions since it will increase returns: but, where that investment wouldn’t otherwise be made at all – i.e. in the rural areas – it’s unlikely to have any impact.

[5 May edit: Today’s The Guardian has a summary of all the manifesto commitments to technology, broadband and digital issues.]

May Day 2010

Greetings on labour’s day of remembrance, solidarity, celebration and re-dedication.

Here’s three things that remind me of why May Day remains important to the international labour movement, and of what solidarity means in the new decade of the 21st century if it is to be more than just a slogan:

1. At home: the last weekend of campaigning before the general election and the next big effort to ensure the BNP doesn’t gain a seat in parliament on Thursday. Of course, HOPE not hate is actively campaigning in key target areas and its organisers still need your support. Solidarity means uniting against the fascists.

2. Internationally: the draft text of the EU’s Free Trade Agreement with Colombia has been dissected by the TUC. Solidarity means freedom of association, and free from the fear of death squads for standing up for the rights of ordinary people – yet the proposed FTA brushes this under the carpet.

3. In Europe: At the European Trade Union Confederation, John Monks’s May Day message was based on the need to stand shoulder to shoulder with Greek workers to demand social justice and that the EU act decisively to stabilise the situation. Building the European project demands strength, not vacillation; perspective, not short-termism. Solidarity means having the dream and the vision for a brighter, alternative future – and the courage to express what that is when the practical situation demands it.

A May Day worth celebrating: and achievements to be won to demonstrate in practice what solidarity means.

[6 May edit: the TUC has reported events from May Day celebrations around the world here.]

IASB puts up new Exposure Draft on pensions accounting

The International Accounting Standards Board has put up a new Exposure Draft proposing amendments to the accounting regime for defined benefit pension schemes.

The Exposure Draft is, essentially, the accounting profession’s way of publicly consulting on changes to the accounting standards which govern financial reporting regimes. Like everything else, accountancy is governed by global standards which seek to harmonise how accountants report company accounts; unfortunately, IAS19, which governs how defined benefit pension schemes are accounted for, is subject to the same short-termist approach as the rest of the corporate world, implying that it is inimical to the long-term nature of defined benefit pension schemes. Both it and its predecessor in the UK (FRS17) have been blamed, at least partly fairly, for contributing to the rush to close DB schemes.

The IASB has already been through a lengthy consultation process on its preliminary views on refining how defined benefit schemes are financially accounted for; this new consultation runs until early September this year. The Draft is available for public comment and the IASB aims to finalise its plans by mid-2011, with a view to the new standard becoming effective in 2012 or 2013.

The new Exposure Draft seeks to ‘improve’ (in the context, a word full of dread!) pension scheme accounting by requiring companies:

– to account immediately for all estimated changes in the cost of providing pension benefits and all changes in the value of plan assets

– to use a new presentation approach that would clearly distinguish between different components of the cost of these benefits

– to disclose clearer information about the risks arising from defined benefit plans.

Some of this inevitably needs decoding. According to KPMG, what this means in practice is that companies will henceforth have to stop booking a ‘profit’ in their accounts equivalent to the gap between expected investment returns and the interest cost paid on pensions liabilities. This ‘pensions credit’ is, essentially, a way of recording a paper profit from the pension scheme where schemes’ investment returns are higher – as they usually are, where schemes are investing in equities – than the AA corporate bond yield used to discount liabilities. The introduction of the amendments to IAS19, which will require the assessment of investment returns to be based on the same yield on AA corporate bonds, thus effectively ending the credit, will, clearly, lead to greater transparency in accounts – and, at the same time, to a further reduction in the attractiveness of running DB pension schemes.

KPMG’s press release quotes that this will ‘cost’ UK businesses £10bn in lost earnings, with the largest schemes facing a ‘loss’ of £50m per annum, while the ubiquitous John Ralfe believes that this will ‘cost’ BT £750m (turning a £500m ‘profit’ from the scheme on the existing basis into a £250m ‘loss’ under the new one). Ralfe has a long-standing antipathy to schemes investing in equities – as this blog has previously observed. In terms of the actual cost in individual cases, much would seem to depend on how much schemes have invested in equities – though (perhaps to disappoint Ralfe) this is unlikely to result in schemes adopting more cautious investment profiles in the interim.

Will it make much difference? Yes, clearly, to those schemes which remain open to future accrual (the BTPS among them): changes in accounting rules which take money away from the profit and loss account – however much such money was paper only, and regardless of whether pension schemes should have been used in this way to boost earnings – will have an impact on ordinary workers since that ‘profit’ will have to be found from elsewhere so as to retain the level of earnings. Whether it will lead to more schemes being closed, given the numbers of schemes which have already come crashing down and the weight of other arguments against running DB provision which already exist, is a moot point.

Certainly, however, it – together with the requirement for further ‘clarity’ on the risks associated with defined benefit provision – can’t help; I’m almost of the view that it’s the latter that is the most damaging feature of all this: regardless of the ‘losses’ which need to be made up, having to write (or read) even more stuff in company accounts about just how much risk is posed by running a defined benefit scheme may well end up wearing down even the most resilient of corporate defenders of DB provision.

Clearly, these remain tough, and worrying, times for DB schemes, and most of all for the members of them.

Credit ratings agencies: the lessons of a children’s fable

Some interesting pieces in the media today on credit ratings agencies, which appear, at least on the face of it, to have been produced pretty much without recognition of each other’s existence: on Peston’s Picks; at Citywire; and by John Gapper at the FT.

The consensus between the pieces appears to be largely that the agencies remain influential, not least in the context of their role in the current financial crises enveloping Greece and Spain, in spite of an inability on past form to recognise – in the gutter language of the day – a turd when they see one and to call as such. Shockingly, it also seems that the agencies were either uninformed (or else misinformed) of the full depth of the products they were rating, or else they simply did not understand them and did not care sufficiently to find out. Either way, I’d have thought that an ability to stand up and say, along with the child in Hans Christian Andersen’s fable, that ‘the Emperor has no clothes on‘ would have been a prime raison d’être for such an organisation – or better said, perhaps, that such an ability ought to be their most highly valued asset in the future. Economies deserve better.

The agencies’ collective ability to resemble the three  ‘hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil’ – except at the bidding of their masters in the financial investment and speculatory world, of course – renders them ripe for reform by any government intent on tackling the financial abuses which have led to the current scandals and returning national economies to be run in the interests of the people.

Britain’s digital future

The Guardian‘s Tech Weekly podcast this week focuses on the parties’ views and attitudes towards Britain’s digital future, featuring discussion and comment from the three leading parties’ main representatives (Stephen Timms, Jeremy Hunt and Lord Razzall) on the following issues:

– curbing piracy and file sharing

– intellectual property copyright reforms

– how to fund rural broadband penetration

– dealing with the library of government data.

I haven’t yet listened to this in full but will be doing so with some interest, blogging any issues that arise. In the meantime, you can pick up the podcast, or listen online, here.

A greener wireless industry

Telecoms companies have united in another green initiative, this time with the aim of achieving a 50% reduction in the energy consumption of so-called 4th generation (or LTE) mobile wireless communication networks, and with the aim of commercialising its work by the end of 2012. The Earth (Energy Aware Radio and neTwork tecHnologies) project is based on research into ways of saving energy in mobile networks, network components and radio interfaces with the aim of laying the foundations for a new generation of energy-efficient communications equipment.

Other than that, the company press release is really rather dense (which may well account for the distinct lack of interest amongst the UK press, even on what seems to be a slow news day). Indeed, the initiative seems to have got underway some three months ago and only now has a press release been put together about it. Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson are the lead names on the initiative (as indeed the former was on a previously announced green initiative, which I blogged about here) but it also encompasses 13 other partners, including research institutes and universities, and the European standards organisation, ETSI, alongside the telecoms partners.

LTE (Long-Term Evolution) is the name for the next generation of mobile, with a wide range of frequencies deployed to allow users to watch high-definition video and receive much faster downloads on their mobile devices. An auction encompassing LTE-appropriate spectrum has just been concluded in the Netherlands, while similar is currently underway in Germany. Plans in the UK, intended to have been facilitated by Kip Meek’s independent brokerage and accepted by the government, have been derailed both by operator objections and by the loss of key chunks of the Digital Economy Bill, but may return to the agenda after the general election.

So, the new initiative is timely and very welcome – even if the EARTH programme, if not its aims, suffers from an inevitable imprecision as well as the equally inevitable strong dose of corporate puff. Similar to the last initiative, however, my gripe remains the relative lack of UK involvement. The University of Surrey is one of the consortium partners, but UK involvement seems otherwise to be minimal. Leadership on these sorts of initiatives is up for grabs and it would be a shame were the technical expertise in energy efficiency generated by such initiatives to flow largely elsewhere.

The ‘Google tax’ and net neutrality

It is being reported that Vodafone is to ask the European Union to take action so as to ‘facilitate bilateral agreements between telecom operators and online content providers like Google’ – essentially, to allow network operators to charge content providers, such as Google, YouTube and, probably, the BBC’s iPlayer, additional fees in relation to the network demands placed by the users of such services.

Operators would rather charge content providers than consumers, but it would seem that some network operators have started to realise that the ‘all you can eat’ model – under which bandwidth comes at a flat rate (except, perhaps, for usage caps on really high users) – is not a viable economic model in a scenario of the rapid growth in bandwidth consumption we are experiencing. More and more for less and less is never a particular sound economic model. Clearly, in such a situation of heavy retail competition, essentially preventing operators from starting to raise prices, or to alter pricing structures in accordance with consumers’ capacity usage, operators need to look for alternative sources of revenue – and content providers represent it. (How we’ve got into this mess in the first place is a different blog post altogether.)

Were they to succeed, then this is likely to lead to a further commercialisation of the internet, in terms of how the content that you read, or view, is paid for (though, to be fair, such a commercialisation is proceeding apace anyway via new advertising models), with network operators essentially wanting their own slice of this action.

On the face of it, the reference to the need for EU action looks a little odd – there is nothing to stop operators coming to such bilateral agreements amongst themselves and, in a free market, that’s probably the more preferable response (where, of course, content providers are prepared to play ball, which they may well not be).

The other difficulty, of course, is the reference to the principle of net neutrality, according to which network operators should carry net traffic on an open, non-discriminatory basis. (Roger Darlington reviews the issues of net neutrality very well in his monthly column for Connected, the magazine of the Connect Sector of Prospect, which you can also read online here.) Starting to charge content providers for network quality, or levels of consumption (as measured by capacity usage), starts to affect how the net operates since content providers, under the commercial pressures of such agreements, are likely to want to see ‘their’ traffic prioritised by those with whom they have reached such agreements. Indeed, such prioritisation is likely to be included within any such agreements on charging. The upshot will be changes to how the net operates, and is experienced, some of which may well be invisible to the naked eye – a problem for those supporting a liberal internet and likely to lead to such principles being heavily compromised.

The original source for this post reports that Vodafone is making its push via a shortly-to-be-finalised submission to an EU consultation on net neutrality. This is a bit strange, since the last I saw from the EU on this issue was this (part of last year’s EU telecoms package) which, in Annexe 2, does talk of the importance of preserving ‘the open and neutral character of the net’ and seeking to enshrine net neutrality as a policy objective for member states. I can’t find a reference to an open consultation on this on the appropriate pages of the EU portal, although we know from Ofcom’s annual plan for 2010/2011 that some activity will be taking place (A1.77) – while Roger’s piece also refers to a UK discussion and consultation on net neutrality taking place ‘later this year’ (and, evidently, within the context of EU action).

Such confusion aside, it is clear that operators (the original source cites also Telefonica) are starting to gird their loins for an attack on net neutrality so as to allow them to seek to charge content providers for access (in this context, Project Canvas takes on a new light since it would seem to allow project partners to side-step any such charges). Equally, the EU looks set against such a model, so it could be quite a battle. Consumers will end up paying the price somewhere, although whether that’s a cash-based or a principles-based price (or both) is an interesting question.

Orange refused Swiss merger

Swiss competition regulators have refused permission for Orange, the smallest of three operators in Switzerland, to merge with Sunrise, the Danish-owned second largest operator, on the grounds that the proposal would undermine market dynamics and damage consumer interests.

The merged entity, for which proposals had been developed last November, would have had a market share of 38%, compared to the 62% held by Swisscom, the former monopoly operator. However, the view of the Swiss authorities was that the merged operator: ‘would have been in a collective dominant position which risked eliminating effective competition.’ Uppermost in the authorities’ mind was that it would be more advantageous in a two-company market for both to collude over pricing levels.

An appeal, which must be lodged within 30 days, is thought likely [registration required; limited viewing time]. In the meantime, a knock-on effect of the decision has been to delay a planned flotation of TDC [registration required; limited viewing time], the Danish parent of Sunrise, which is currently owned by a consortium of five well-known private equity groups (Blackstone Group; Permira; Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Co; Providence; and Apax Partners). Part of the Swiss merger would have meant France Telecom, Orange’s parent, handing over €1.5bn in cash to TDC in return for a 75% share in the merged operation – without which, on the face of it, the private equity groups concerned have been unable to realise sufficient gains prior to their exit from the Danish market.

Clearly, the Swiss mobile communications market is different to the UK one and Switzerland is outside the EU, so it’s not particularly interesting to examine the reasons for the approval of a merger in one market compared to a decision to reject a merger creating a still-small entity in another. At the same time, however, and taking these two recent situations together, it is interesting that the rationale for merger approval or rejection in neo-liberal societies seems, on the face of it, not to be so much the desire to create, or achieve, conditions of high competition but to minimise the point at which there is a potential for pricing collusion.

It’s also an interesting reflection on the role of private equity groups, and their ability to extract high rewards from relatively quiet situations (the Swiss mobile market is 9m consumers) – as well as a comment on  the involvement of private equity groups in telecoms companies. If the €1.5bn was as crucial as that to their exit from the Danish market, and sufficient to postpone it when its arrival has been blocked, then it is likely that the efficiency gains sparking their involvement in TDC have not been sufficient to make their involvement in Denmark worthwhile. At least – not yet; which may in turn spark a note of further warning to Danish trade union colleagues.

It would have been even more interesting had Deutsche Telekom, in which Blackstone has a stake, had been involved in the Swiss market.

Young Fast Optoelectronics

One of LabourStart’s current campaigns concerns workers at Young Fast Optoelectronics, a Taiwanese manufacturer of touch panel screens whose customers include Samsung, LG, HTC (which supplies phones to Vodafone in the UK) and Google. Following a concerted union organising drive at the factory in the face of poor working conditions, which led to the establishment of the union in December 2009, management at the plant has sacked five union officers and more than ten active union members.

LabourStart is organising an e-mail campaign in support of the union and the sacked workers, and calling for the improvement of working conditions at the plant, which you can join either from the LabourStart homepage, or else directly here.

It’s a telecoms industry plant, and these workers need to know that they’re not alone. Please do what you can to support them.

COSMOS officially launched in UK

COSMOS, a major five-country European study into the long-term effects of mobile phone usage, was launched in the UK yesterday. Over the course of the next two weeks, some 2.4m people in the UK will be invited to take part in the initial stages of the study, via an online questionnaire. The other participant countries are Denmark, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands.

The commencement of the research in the UK is the responsibility of the UK’s Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research Programme, itself set up following the publication of the Stewart Report into mobile phone use in May 2000. The Stewart Report concluded that, while exposure to radiofrequency emissions from handsets and mobile base stations at levels below the existing guidelines do not cause adverse health effects to the general population, there was a need for a ‘substantial research programme’ into the isses.

The most recent MTHR report, published in 2007 (full report; press release), found no association between short-term mobile phone use and brain cancer, or evidence that brain function was affected either by mobile phone signals or by TETRA (high speed, high frequency communications networks used by the emergency services), and reported that there was no need for further research in this area. However, the report did acknowledge that there were ‘significant uncertainties’ as regards more long-term exposure, since available studies were based on very few people who had used their phones for ten years or more, and that these could ‘only be resolved by monitoring the health of a large cohort of phone users over a long period of time’. At the same time, cancers rarely show up as quickly as within ten years.

Consequently, the COSMOS research is a part of progressing this aim via a 20-30 year study of the mobile phone usage and health of 200,000 adults across Europe, 90,000 of which will be selected from network operator subscriber lists in the UK, for which funding has so far been made available for the first five years (£3.1m).  The study will focus on the risk of cancers, benign tumors and neurological and cerebro-vascular diseases, as well as changes in the occurrence of specific symptoms over time, such as headache and sleep disorders.

The number of mobile phones has increased dramatically in the decade since the Stewart report: then, there were 25m phones in operation (a market penetration rate of about 40%) while currently, according to Ofcom, there are 76.8m mobile phone subscriptions (a total of 1.26 connections per UK inhabitant) (Figure 4.42). Despite the increasing use of smartphones and mobile handsets in general as devices for a range of uses other than talking to people, mobile volume call minutes continue to grow sharply, as the following figure shows:

Source: Ofcom Communications Market Report 2009, Figure 4.71

At current levels of usage, we spend one day per year (24 hours), for each connection that exists, calling someone on a mobile phone. Given the penetration rate in the UK, each one of us actually spends more than 30 hours a year talking on the mobile. These levels of usage are unlikely to drop – smartphones add functionality without replacing the existing, and evidently expanding, need to call people on the hoof.

The study will thus make an essential contribution to filling important gaps in our knowledge about the effects of mobile phone usage in the long-term. As the COSMOS researchers say, there is no evidence that mobiles present any dangers to health – but we don’t know that they don’t. An initial report is expected in 2020 – perhaps an auspicious date for generating a vision as to what the overall conclusions at the end of the project might conceivably look like.

Love it

The BBC is reporting that Unilever, the makers of Marmite, is initiating legal action against the BNP to force the racist party to remove a jar of Marmite which apparently features in its election broadcast (further, and funnier, from Reuters and from Harry’s Place).

It would be nice to think that Unilever subscribes, even in a small way, to the ‘not in my name’ philosophy of HOPE not hate; I can’t say that it doesn’t – and anything which ties up the BNP in the threat of legal action, or distracts or otherwise helps to sap it, has to be good news.