Leader News

BT hit a low note with Midband

Tags:
Midband,
BT

Leader ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 06 Sep 2005 15:40 BST

No-one likes to see a good technology die. The relentless march of progress means that yesterday's bleeding-edge breakthrough is almost bound to become tomorrow's legacy kit, being ignominiously kicked around the room or gawped at in a museum. It happened to the steam engine, the mangle, the penny farthing, and even those early Cray supercomputers.

We would not include BT's Midband product in that list, though.

Midband managed the rare trick of being obsolete before it was even launched. A 128kbps Internet connection based on ISDN, it failed to include such basic features as always-on email access, while costing nearly as much as a proper broadband connection.

True, Midband did have one advantage over ADSL, in that it worked pretty much anywhere. This is why Pierre Danon, one-time chief executive of BT Retail, saw fit back in November 2002 to unveil Midband as the cure to the digital divide.

But looking back, the Midband episode illustrates that some parts of BT still didn't get how popular and pervasive broadband would be. Danon declared in late 2002 that 10 percent of the population would still not be able to get broadband down their phone line by mid-2005. Check the calendar, Pierre; availability has reached 99.6 percent today. And Midband's demise is expected to affect barely three thousand people.

BT deserves credit as much as anyone else for the great strides that have taken place in broadband take-up and rollout in the last few years. But it's still worrying that it bothered with a product like Midband in the first place.

The broadband divide is narrowed for now, but there's a real danger that this problem could emerge again in the next few years. The laws of physics dictate that those who live and work in more remote places will struggle to get connections as fast as their urban cousins. The solution, today as in 2002, lies in more innovative technologies, wireless especially.

Now that Midband is on the way out, BT must continue its work on areas such as WiMax, while ensuring that its 21st Century Network is truly inclusive rather than creating new barriers. And the next time someone suggests an idea as half-cocked as Midband, show them the door.