Chapter 753 Broadband Promotion Program

"With all due respect, the development of the broadband industry in the UK is slow and stagnant, like a snail! It has seriously affected the development of our Internet technology industry. If the status quo cannot be changed as soon as possible, then in a few years, Britain and even the entire Europe’s Internet industry will lag far behind the development of Asia and North America, becoming a veritable Internet desert.”

This is what the head of the Digital Future Investment Company said when facing a group of heads of relevant agencies at a hearing held by the new government on the development of the British technology industry after Cameron came to power.

The purpose of this meeting is to launch a plan to vigorously develop network facilities in the UK, with the aim of building an ultra-fast broadband network covering the entire UK within five years.

"Although O2 Telecom has tried its best to build broadband access services in the UK, the fact that needs to be acknowledged is that British Telecom (BT) still controls most of the UK's optical fiber access infrastructure. I think you should Listen more to the opinions of some small and medium-sized companies. BT charges them too high fiber access fees..."

In private, Barron once complained to the British Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt:

"Of course, from a personal perspective, I am happy to see this situation. It is also because of this that O2 Telecom has been able to develop rapidly in its broadband business and win many customers at more suitable prices. But from the perspective of the entire country It seems that even O2 Telecom needs to measure the cost-effectiveness of infrastructure investment, so it will not be able to take care of a wider range of markets in the short term..."

Another meaning he meant, which he did not say directly, was that British Telecom received too much of the government's investment, which was not consistent with their construction and expenditure ratio.

It can be said that many of the data listed in this meeting illustrate that the current level of network construction in the UK has fallen far behind the current global leaders.

For example, according to data from Ofcom, the British telecommunications regulator, so far, the proportion of British households with ultra-high-speed broadband access speeds of 30Mbps and above is less than 5%!

At present, only about 12% of Internet users in the UK have uninterrupted access to 5 megabits per second high-speed network, compared with 65% in South Korea.

A survey by Ofcom last week also showed that only 0.2% of households in the UK currently have access to optical fiber networks, while the proportion in Sweden is 12%, and Japan ranks first in the world with 34%.

Moreover, the main fiber access method in the UK is fiber to the road. This is to first connect the fiber to the phone booths in each area, and then connect it to each home through the existing copper wire. This is called the FTTCand method, which can provide The fastest Internet speed is only 4 megabits per second.

O2 Telecom provides optical fiber direct-to-home (FTTH) in some areas, with network speeds up to 100 megabits per second.

"Broadband network itself is not an end, but the most important thing is to use various services of broadband network, such as remote classes and telemedicine services, to make people more closely connected, which will change people's lifestyles and accelerate The transmission of information throughout society promotes the development of our Internet industry - although we now have some leading Internet companies in Europe and even the world, such as Woaw, such as Argos.com, such as DailyVedio, if we do not speed up our broadband If the popularity of these companies increases, the development of these companies will eventually be restricted, and they will eventually lose to those companies in Silicon Valley..."

Barron told Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt that these words were not alarmist:

"In the past year, the digital industry contributed 10% of the new value to the UK, equivalent to approximately 130 billion pounds, and the number of employees in the digital industry accounted for 6% of the total workforce in the UK, more than 1.7 million people. It can be clearly seen that , the digital industry still showed strong growth momentum during the economic recession.”

Similarly, according to a survey by the London School of Economics, laying out ultra-fast broadband networks across the UK could create more than 300,000 new jobs.

And every time the government invests 100 million pounds in network-related infrastructure, it may bring about an increase of nearly 10 billion pounds in related industries!

The so-called "three things to do when a new official takes office" is that Cameron himself is very concerned about the development of London Technology City - the mayor of Greater London was already held by Johnson of the Conservative Party two years ago, and he is also very concerned about London Technology City. Strongly promote.

In addition, during the general election, he also promised to increase government investment and promote employment, and now he also needs to carry out some plans that can be publicized.

This is also the main reason why this discussion was held not long after he took office.

As for the funds to promote this plan - Barron promised to Cameron that if the funds allocated for this plan are used more "fairly", the funds will be invested in companies that are more active in construction, rather than still relying on If British Telecom is the main player, its British Fortune Times (BFT) Fund is willing to return part of the funds invested in this fund and the corresponding interest to the government in advance.

According to this agreement, the BFT Fund will first return 25% of the funds and corresponding interest to the Bank of England, totaling more than 13.5 billion pounds. These funds will be used to invest in plans to promote broadband infrastructure in the UK within five years.

When Standard Chartered Bank acquired Northern Rock Bank, which was injected with capital by the government, Barron was willing to let Standard Chartered Bank return the 25 billion pounds invested by the government.

But the condition at that time was that the government needed to inject a total of 50 billion pounds into the British Fortune Era (BFT) fund, part of which was used to return the 25 billion pounds, and the other part was required to be returned by the BFT fund through investment.

Now, through Barron's series of investments, especially the profits after short selling in Europe, there is not much pressure to return part of the funds.

And most importantly, when the remaining 25 billion pounds of the BFT fund were converted into US dollars, the exchange rate of the pound to the US dollar was at a high of 2.11...

Now, although the exchange rate of the pound to the US dollar has not reached the lowest level ten years later, it has also dropped to around 1.45.

Just because of the exchange rate, the advantage they have gained is already very obvious, not to mention that the assets that the BFT fund bought at the bottom during the subprime mortgage crisis have now appreciated a lot.

Now Barron doesn't even need to sell the invested assets. He can just use part of his own funds to make a profit, which is enough to pay the 25% of the funds and the corresponding interest.

Moreover, in the broadband infrastructure promotion plan carried out by the government using these funds, O2 Telecom will certainly be able to get a considerable part of the subsidies.