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GENERAL ELECTION In the first of three articles by the major political parties, the Conservatives explain their stance on IT issues and how they would help our industry
Opinion
Communications networks have a role in the 21st century as important as railways in the 19th century and roads in the 20th century.
The last Conservative government planned a period of regulated duopoly to enable the cable companies to build alternative infrastructures before BT was unchained in 2002 and Oftel wound up. Then Labour was elected. Within months Oftel had been transformed into a pension plan for civil servants, regulating access to the BT network until their dotage.
But as Labour fiddled with stakeholder groups and burdensome regulation, our overseas competitors forged ahead with their plans. From Brussels to Beijing, from Stockholm to Seoul, home-workers have bandwidth not available in the UK outside a few science parks, and the elderly can see their grandchildren play when they go online for a video gossip.
On 11 April, the Chinese premier Wen Jiabao met his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh in Bangalore and said their two countries must make use of their complementary IT skills, China's hardware expertise and India's software know-how, to make the 21st century the "Asian century of the IT industry"....