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Dead hand of Civil Service forces out-dated technology on Pace

You can't use WiFi LAN technology for a commercial service in Britain. It's hard to come up with a convincing reason why it is still uniquely a problem to the UK, when the technology is well established everywhere else

You wouldn't expect fanfares for a trial of a technology like high-speed Internet broadband in the year 2002 unless the technology involved a big breakthrough. So I don't find it amazing that neither NTL nor Telewest bothered to mention that they were trialling wireless as a way of getting PCs connected to their Pace-built set top boxes.

What I do find amazing, is the fact that a Government minister went to the bother of visiting Pace Micro in Bradford, to see the technology.

For me, there are excuses, and there are reasons.

Douglas Alexander, DTI Minister with responsibility for the Communications and Information Industries, can probably justify his trip by calling it a visit to the "region" and his visit to Pace because of the political importance of providing BBC and ITV channels free over cable to people who don't want Sky or ITV digital subscription charges.

But the real reason for it probably has more to do with the amount of money the exchequer hopes to collect for 3G phone networks - billions of pounds.

The fact is that a lot of what the 3G networks hope to offer, could be provided nearly free over the Internet, using Bluetooth and WiFi access points in homes and offices - if it were legal to do so commercially.

The Government plans to alter this law. A "statutory instrument" is being drawn up, after due process of consultation, and the mandarins responsible expect to have legislation ready for the summer.

The mandarins are doing their job; they aren't causing the problem. The problem is caused by an utterly out of date law which prohibits commercial operation of "licence-exempt" frequencies like the 2.4 GHz band used by Bluetooth and WiFi.

Legal experts say it's far from clear that the law applies the way the Government says it does. One lawyer told the Mobile Campaign: "The law could easily be read as permitting certain commercial operations in its current form, and the only reason it isn't being challenged, I suspect, is that people don't want to rock the boat and slow down the current crawl towards liberalisation."

What is clear, however, is that if investors really understood the threat to 3G that 2.4GHz wireless (Bluetooth and WiFi) can pose, the Government could easily face an outcry from people like Vodafone and BT and Hutchison. If I were in their shoes, I'd already be demanding a reduction in the swingeing licence fees they're committed to pay.

In the USA, wireless "hot spots" where you can stop and connect to the Internet with a portable computer are already widespread. In the UK, there are a few trial sites, run under special licence.

Is this really how Government expresses its desire to make the UK a "leader" in the Internet? - or just a cynical delaying tactic to get the next installment on the 3G licences out of the telcos before the price drops?