Information society : agenda for action in the UK : evidence received after 31 March 1996 / Select Committee on Science and Technology.
- Great Britain. Parliament. House of Lords. Science and Technology Committee.
- Date:
- 1996
Licence: Open Government Licence
Credit: Information society : agenda for action in the UK : evidence received after 31 March 1996 / Select Committee on Science and Technology. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![23 April 1996] Lord Craig of Radley contd.] looking at the problem of how do we get a combination of multimedia broadcast and interactive services to our customers in the United Kingdom. How are we going to deliver them? What have we got to do to deliver them? We are thinking our way through all sorts of scenarios and trying to make deals and arrangements to achieve this end. If this regulation did not exist there would be an obvious way for us to do it and that would be to build the network in a certain way. 516. So you feel that there is a strong constraint because of that particular area of regulation which at the present time is limiting your ways of doing things? Viewed from the customer’s point of view it seems to me that that regulation is also a handicap. If the customer can get what he wants through one channel, although it may be multimedia, it may be interactive, that clearly is an advantage I would have thought for the customer. (Dr Rudge) I certainly think the nature of these regulations and the constraints do not serve the customer well. It creates monopolies, which we are trying to avoid, by only one type of company being able to provide a range of services. So you do away with the competition, which is also in the customer’s interest, and you prevent powerful players like BT from getting into doing things which I believe would be in the general interest of customers in the United Kingdom, be they business or residential customers. Chairman 517. Do these sorts of limitations limit your ability to compete in operations abroad or in fact are you able to deal with partner companies abroad and get this sort of experience on which you can draw? (Dr Rudge) We have set ourselves a vision and a mission to be the most successful telecommunications company in the world, which is no mean challenge I might tell you. With most of the partners we have worked with we certainly contribute a leading position in these new services. We have, as you will know, an alliance in the United States where we have a partner and certainly MCI brings something to the party. Some of our other partners are fresh-starts, new competitive allainces in Europe for example, and it will be mostly from us to them in terms of technical flow. We cannot really operate around the world and hope that our partners will do it for us. In any case if we cannot apply it here then it would not be beneficial to us. Certainly we want to see ourselves as leaders in this field. We will not be the leader in every new service, quite clearly, but we want to see ourselves well up at the forefront being able to provide first rate world class network services in the United Kingdom and anywhere else we choose to operate. 518. Could we go on to your recently publicised interest in Intranets. Tell us something about that. (Dr Rudge) If I can just say about Internet and Intranet, the Internet is, in my view the “ham radio of the information age”. I do not mean that in a disrespectful way because it As generating a lot of excellent technology, good ideas, new services and so on. Intranet is concerned with providing services in a more professional way and to relatively closed user [ Continued groups. Even though those groups may be large we use the technology of the Internet to provide information services on a closed user basis. Rupert can give some examples of us supplying Internet access or the Intranet approach to services. (Mr Gavin) We view the Internet and the Intranet as being the key growth area, primarily in what we term ‘data dial tone’. It gives the customer the capability of connecting anywhere to anywhere on an open standard in the transmission of data in a way that is very comparable to the connection of voice in the traditional telephony model, obviously with some other interesting characteristics in the networks that are necessary for the performance of these. In connection with Intranets, therefore, we see that there is a growing market for individual companies or individual communities of interest to be able to use this form of data dial tone as a basic communication methodology; in that regard there are various activities that we have already embarked on, for example our HealthNet which is an IP based Intranet for all the various bodies within the Health Service. We are also actively exploring the possibility of provisioning a concept called London Link which is an IP network for organisations within London. This was recently announced as a project that ourselves and AT&T would be providing trials of in the coming months. We do see it as a very important growth area primarily geared towards data provision, therefore E-mail, basic communication, file transfer, rather than well geared to the broader multimedia and the video rich entertainment and learning types of services which are also very, very important for the future. Lord Butterworth 519. You have had, I believe, one or two experiments, have you not, with the networking of schools. Could you tell us about that? (Dr Rudge) We have a number of school experiments using the Intranet, and by that I particularly mean the kind of data transfer that Rupert was referring to, that is what we call ‘medium band’, or ‘ISDN type’ speeds, not broadband multimedia speeds of transmission. At the same time we are also doing our interactive services trial in Ipswich which also goes out to schools. That is a multimedia trial and it includes full video capability, interactive video. I do not know if you want to say a few words about the specific trials, Rupert? (Mr Gavin) The specific services that we are currently providing in the education field include CampusWorld which is an Internet based content service. This is the concept of a walled garden with currently about 18,000 pages of information that schools, both pupils and teachers, can access in a closed environment. CampusVision is the communication using ISDN telephony to enhance remote learning, particularly in areas of the country where teacher provision in certain subjects is difficult, therefore the utilisation of ISDN tele-conferencing can enhance the teaching capability. Within Bristol we are providing a trial network called Bristol Education On-Line. 520. Is that Withywood?](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b32218631_0062.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
