If you want to impress in Silicon Valley, you need a videophone, according to Stephen Timms, who today completes his first year as e-commerce minister. "I showed this to some high-tech wireless people, and they thought it was stunning," he says of his NEC e606, demonstrating an ITN bulletin he downloaded earlier when he was on a train.
It's fair to say that Timms, who spent 16 years working in IT, is a good match for his ministerial role. "I am enjoying it enormously. It's a fabulous job," he says.
So what does he feel he has achieved in a year? "We've certainly made a lot of progress on broadband," he says. Connections have tripled, from 666,000 a year ago to 2m. Contrary to some press claims, the definition of broadband (128kbps or faster) has not changed, he says.
This still means the UK has just 3.4 connections per 100 inhabitants, less than the 3.9 average figure for the 30 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development nations last June.
Germany remains ahead of the UK, concedes Timms. "Although in the short-term, through this huge dominance of Deutsche Telekom [BT's German equivalent] they've got a big number, it's not growing very fast. In Germany, prices are slipping up," he says, whereas in the UK, "the pressure on pricing is downwards". This is because BT directly provides only a quarter of connections.
"Given where we started from, the progress that has been made is very, very encouraging, with well over 30,000 new connections a week," he adds. "We need that rate of improvement to be sustained, and I'm pretty confident that given this very competitive environment we have, and some new development with wireless as well, we can be confident about that."
What Timms calls "affordable broadband" is available to 70% of UK citizens - the same as the US, he points out - but this should be higher. "There is a huge, huge groundswell of enthusiasm right across the country, and frustration as well, in places where broadband has not yet been delivered," he says.
Timms' solution to this lies in the government's £1bn budget for connecting all schools and surgeries, along with the criminal justice system and councils, to broadband. "It's my job to make absolutely sure that we invest that money in a way that meets the needs of public services in a cost-effective way, but just as importantly, do it an a way that opens up broadband services to people outside the public services," he says. He chairs a committee of ministers on this subject.
For example, a consortium including cable firm Telewest is building the infrastructure to provide broadband for both schools and universities in the West Midlands. "It's not owned by the public sector, it's owned by this consortium, and they can sell it to whomever they want," he says.
And he thinks wireless will be the key technology: "This was one of the lessons from my visit to Silicon Valley. Classically, Wi-Fi means sticking up an aerial and giving wireless broadband access to people using their laptops sitting in an airport departure lounge or Paddington station. But we talked to people who are bringing to the market Wi-Fi aerials with a reach of some miles, not just a few hundred yards.
"The vast majority of the population lives within a few miles of a school, so you could envisage that it might be the case for a lot of communities - and there are one or two examples where this is now happening - that you provide broadband to the school, and you could then provide a wireless antenna set up at the school."
In the meantime, there is a broadband technology that already covers the whole country: satellite. But it is pricey, particularly to install. So five of the regional development agencies (RDAs) are now subsidising the cost. Timms has just visited a financial adviser in Battle, East Sussex, which received one of 500 grants from the South-East England Development Agency (Seeda) for the installation of its satellite connection.
The adviser employed three people in south London. "They decided to move to Battle, but not until broadband was available. This arrangement with Seeda meant they could get broadband by satellite, so they moved last November. They've now recruited six people locally. That's what we need on a much wider scale around the country," Timms says.
If Stephen Timms and the government can make these ideas work, the UK will have excellent access to broadband. As with the technology, it's now about speed of delivery.
Timms other tips
The European directive banning spam:
For intra-EU spam, I think we can pretty much resolve the problem. The difficulty is, as far as email is concerned, very little comes from within the EU. That isn't the case with text messaging spam, so I think the directive will be a pretty powerful tool as far as that is concerned.
Whether 3G phone companies have been hindered by their multi-billion pound UK licences: Along with a counterpart service in Italy, [3's UK service] is the first major 3G service in the west. Not only that, all the other 3G licence holders, including mm02 [who last week announced a £10bn loss partly due to the licence cost], are committed to proceeding with a 3G service. Indeed, Orange has announced it will abandon investment in 3G, except in the UK.
We're a world leader in the development of games software. I think 3G will be a big platform for this, and through your mobile subscription there's a very clear way of paying for all this. Micropayments are very easy.
How Wi-Fi will fit with 3G:
The view that emerged from my visit to California is that Wi-Fi hotspots will accustom people to being able to access broadband from their laptops, and that will be a key driver for 3G, as 3G can deliver that on the move. We'll see PC cards that can deliver Wi-Fi and 3G.
On corporate social responsibility, such as telecoms firms providing access to phone services in Africa:
In the future, we want there to be attractive commercial opportunities in the huge African market. I don't see these activities as philanthropic, I see them as companies exploring the opportunities to make commercial successes by behaving in a responsible way.
These CSR activities are very creative in terms of developing new commercial opportunities.
