View from City Road: No great changes on BT ban

Whatever the recommendations of today's report by the cross-party Trade and Industry Select Committee on the fibre-optic cabling of Britain, they are unlikely to have much effect. By all accounts they are muddled and confusing, but even if they were not the Government is already committed to preventing BT from providing entertainment services down the telephone line until 2001 at the earliest.

Privately, some ministers concede that this was a mistake, but with the prospect of billion-pound law suits raining down on them from angry cable TV companies if they renege, the policy is unlikely to change - not until there is a change of government, anyway. Yet without one, BT is reluctant to proceed with the pounds 15bn estimated cost of a nationwide fibre-optic network. Instead Britain will have to make do with the piecemeal, market-driven approach being offered by the cable TV companies.

In countries such as the US and Japan, information superhighways are a national imperative. They are shouted about by politicians and taught about in schools. Technical wizards spend weeks dreaming up services to shoot down the fibre-optic wires. In Britain, the market is again being left to its own devices; the Government has been impotent in driving the multi-media revolution forward.

Almost certainly, the Select Committee will come down in favour of an early end to the ban on BT, but in a phased way. Grist to BT's mill, but in practical terms hardly forceful enough to sway ministers.