Digital Economy Bill

Lord Maxton Excerpts

1st reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 31st January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maxton (Lab)]

My Lords, I would like to add one category of cost to that: someone who lives in a remote area some distance away from the main telephone service. The cost of BT or another company installing a line up to that property can be outrageous, to be honest. It can be very considerable and much more than most people can afford to pay. So to the list of those who are disadvantaged and cannot get full access, including, quite rightly, the disabled, must be added those who live in a single property at some distance away from the main service. The costs can be prohibitive.

[Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom]

My Lords, I will address the House on Amendment 5, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn. We all want to prevent digital exclusion and this is clearly an admirable way of attempting to do so. But the noble Lord suggests that,

“any excess costs … shall not be paid by users of communication service providers”.

So those excess costs need to be paid, presumably by someone other than any of the users of communications service providers. I wonder whether this amendment might be strengthened if it were to set out by whom those excess costs should be paid.

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Beyond that, I would like to see the development of joint masts and would not rule out the possibility, I am afraid, of subsidy. If at the end of the day we are prepared to subsidise the provision of fibre, we should also be prepared to subsidise if necessary in very remote areas the sort of masts that will host 5G, because that will be the way that a lot of people get broadband.

[Lord Maxton]

My Lords, I just want to raise an issue of the future rather than the present. I hope that masts will soon be a thing of the past and we move to satellite provision of telephony in the very near future. I do not know whether that will be the case, but I have certainly heard it will be. Otherwise, I agree with my noble friends that we ought to be moving to having the best provider we can get in any area. I am with EE, and when I am sitting in my motor car driving along with my wife, who is on O2, and my son, who is with Virgin Media, who gets a service on their phone in some areas of the country will depend on the provider.

[Baroness Byford]

My Lords, as someone who is not as well versed as some noble Lords with the technology, it always strikes me as strange that if you go abroad, wherever you are, you seem to be able to get access. What do they do that we do not? Are there lessons that we should be learning? Do they have a different system? How does it actually work? It seems ludicrous that we are going into such nitty-gritty when perhaps, over there, there is something that we are not even opening our minds to.

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[Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom]

My Lords, these are very important amendments. There is a concern that BT has tended to invest just enough in a particular area to make it uneconomic for competitors to come in and provide services there. This may just be a natural complaint by people who have been beaten fair and square in the marketplace, because BT is a very large and effective company which is, in many respects, a national champion. However, if it is a canard, it is a persistent one. I hope the Minister will be able to say something to reassure the Committee, either that it is untrue or that something is going to be done about it.

[Lord Maxton]

My Lords, I too support these amendments, which are on the right lines. My only reservation is that if BT is already the owner of the line into a property—it could be a commercial one—who is responsible if a repair needs to be done: Openreach or BT?

[Lord Fox]

My Lords, we associate ourselves with Amendment 20. I was under the impression that Ofcom was already looking at the process of legal separation, and if this is designed to strengthen its arm and make sure that it happens, then we approve. At Second Reading, I talked about the desirability of full structural separation. We know that the pension deficit has been used as a reason. When that calculation was made, was the full effect of the EE acquisition factored into the pension equation? Now that there have been substantial changes in the make-up of the corporate parent, can a different argument be made on pensions?

In the recesses of my mind I recall something being attempted in York along the lines of Amendment 21. It foundered because there was no separation in the BT/Openreach model and the route to market proved very difficult. Perhaps to be successful Amendment 21 needs Amendment 20, if not full structural separation.