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Internet Service Providers Association Annual Conference

The Rt. Hon. Stephen Timms MP,  Former Minister of State for Competitiveness
House of Lords, London,  24 October 2007

I am delighted to be here – thank you for inviting me.

Tim Berners-Lee said:

"The power of the web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect."

That remark sets out well the simplicity and the power of the potential of the Net. The Internet presents all of us with challenges: it is breaking down traditional physical barriers and changing our understanding of our identities, and of national roles. It is the great enabler of globalisation.

Internet issues go beyond national borders. The Net throws starkly into relief the differences between cultures – the differences in social pressures and values. Many do not share values which all of us would subscribe to: freedom of speech, unfettered access to knowledge, respecting the rights of others.

Competitiveness

My role as Minister for Competitiveness in the new Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform is to ensure that our competitiveness is maintained and improved. Increasing – and increasingly effective – use of technology and of the internet is one of the key economic levers to achieve this. Effective use of ICT, by businesses, by consumers and by citizens, is becoming an increasingly important driver of economic growth.

Some people have suggested to me they have some difficulties with the name of our new department – Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform – but everyone has been very positive about the department’s content: the resources of the Better Regulation Executive to tackle regulatory reform alongside responsibilities previously housed in the DTI, and a crystal clear brief: to be a strong and effective voice for business at the heart of Government and across Whitehall.

My brief within the department is a pretty wide one, including responsibility for telecommunications. Britain came from behind on broadband to take what is now a world leading position on broadband availability and take up, and I congratulate this industry on what it has achieved – a very important success for the British economy.

Next Generation

But now there is more to be done. I have been arguing recently for Britain to consolidate our international competitiveness by embracing next generation broadband in the near future.

With growing demands for bandwidth-hungry applications – like high quality two-way video or demand for high definition video downloads, for example – the economy is going to need massive investment in new infrastructure. In other countries – France, Germany, USA, Japan – fibre to the home is starting to be deployed on a significant scale. I don’t know of a single home in Britain with a fibre connection. We need to start thinking now about how we will improve our infrastructure to take advantage of the new and, as yet largely unforeseen, opportunities the new infrastructure will offer to us.

The average speed of broadband in the UK is also slower than in Germany, France and in Japan where it apparently averages 61 Mbit/s. In South Korea, I am told that 90% of homes have broadband at a standard speed, let me repeat that, a standard speed, between 50 and 100 Mbit/s. But they are not sitting on their laurels. They are trialling 1,000 Mbit/s!

I don’t think there are yet the applications for fibre to the home to present a significant competitive advantage to those countries, but I’m sure there soon will be. We need the UK to maintain and develop the competitive advantage we enjoy as a result of every part of the country being able to access a high quality, high capacity, high performance telecommunications network.

To help us move forward on this, I have decided to chair a high level summit at the end of next month, bringing together key people from Government, OFCOM and industry to look at the full range of issues.

I am pleased that Nicholas has accepted the invitation to attend. I hope ISPs will bring their knowledge and experience to the table, so we can reach a consensus on how to achieve quickly the goal of widespread access to Next Generation Broadband with the improvement to the UK’s competitiveness that it will provide.

And we need to find a way to do it which avoids creating a new digital divide amongst users, according to the access speed at which they are able to access the network. What I hope we can do is the opposite – to use the new technology to provide economic and social opportunities in places and to groups who have had far too few opportunities in the past.

Intellectual property protection

In many Internet issues, we can only make progress by developing consensus and common understanding. Effective dialogue invariably beats imposing rules.

As Lord Triesman said earlier this month, we have been closely following the dialogue between ISPs and rights holders on mechanism to stop copyright infringement, in particular on peer to peer networks. I am disappointed that no overall agreement has yet been reached. I know, however, that both sides continue to work closely together and are optimistic they will be able to test a non-automated system of graduated response before the end of the year. I hope so.

We believe this is an area which can be self regulated, and which should be. But we recognise that such agreements are not always easy to achieve, and we have to accept that, after ten months work, agreement has not yet been achieved. So we are examining the issue and our options for action.

Let me be clear. This does not mean we have now ruled out self regulation as our preferred mechanism. If a protocol can be achieved and put into action successfully, we will happily step back. But it does mean we will have to take a serious look at the legislative alternative, ensure that we can apply it if an agreement on self regulation is not achieved, and take the first steps towards working it up. The way forward from here is in your hands.

It is by working together that we will be able to address the real concerns of our citizens, and of your customers, ensuring that they can access material they want quickly and are confident that they and their children are safe on line.

Child protection

In the UK we are quite used to this kind of cooperation – of partnership between stakeholders, working together to address the concerns of users, of businesses, and of society more widely.

The Prime Minister announced on 6 September that Dr Tanya Byron will carry out a review into “helping children and parents get the best from new technologies, while protecting them from potentially harmful material”.

We need to empower and support people to make their own choices about what they see. And to help parents protect their children. Its an important debate.

We want everyone with an interest to have the opportunity to contribute, to shape this independent review and ensure that the review is based on robust evidence and informed opinions. I am pleased that ISPA has already met with Dr Byron and her team and I am sure your contribution will be an important one.

We know that, as well as valuing the huge benefits of modern technology, parents worry about what their children may be accessing online and in video games. It is an opportunity for parents and industry to contribute and to see what more could be done.

The aim is to work together to support children’s safety and wellbeing. Those who have met Tanya so far have been reassured that she is not intending to try and scapegoat industry or to blame the Internet for society’s troubles. We want children to enjoy the superb opportunities that the Internet and video games technologies offer to them. So I hope the industry and its representative bodies will provide a thoughtful contribution in response to Dr Byron’s call for evidence.

Events over the Summer highlighted the level of concern on the part of many around what they see as the unregulated nature of the online environment. The recent report by the House of Lords Science & Technology committee likened the Internet to the “wild west” – and they didn’t mean it as a compliment.

There is a grain of truth here. Like all free markets, it needs users to be well educated in its ways, and confident in its integrity, without those requirements damaging its openness.

Governments alone cannot hope to provide the whole solution. ISPs have a key role in fostering users’ confidence. We all need to ensure that the online environment is as safe and secure as we can make it. But we also need to avoid the temptation to retreat into bunkers or demand new laws as soon as a new set of problems emerges.

Conclusion

Copyright protection; child protection. In so many Internet issues, we can only make progress by working together to find the best solutions. To develop consensus; to identify shared interests; to address concerns; to find technical solutions; to improve awareness and understanding among users of how to use existing tools; to adapt to new technologies and applications; to share good practice…

Next June the OECD is organising a ministerial conference on the future of the Internet economy. I hope to be able to be there. The focus will be: how to increase global connectivity? How to respond to the changes in use of the Internet? How to allow individual choice for access to content?

These are value judgements looked at differently around the world. People have differing expectations and concerns. The approach we have developed in the UK – bringing people together, talking through the issues, looking for a consensus – can be a powerful approach at the international level too, as the UK delegation will be saying at the Internet Governance Forum in Rio next month.

My request is that we should work together, tackle together the difficult issues already on our agenda, plus the difficult issues which will arise in the future as well. Because in that way we can be confident that we will make the most of the fantastic potential – economic potential, social potential – that this technology holds out for us.

Thank you.