The development of the internet has been seen as the most significant advance in IT for many years. In essence, what it does is to allow any computer with a communication channel to offer its contents to anyone else and to get material back from any other connected computer in return. This has come about as a result of work by many excellent computer scientists and by commercial companies realising the value of this and investing in the technology.

Much of the focus in the past has concentrated on ensuring availability of the access devices, traditionally expensive personal computers. But recent technological advances have dealt with this to a large degree by incorporating internet access capability into common cheap devices like digital TV set-top boxes and games consoles.

There is still some way to go to say that internet access devices are affordable for everyone, but it looks likely that the consumer electronics market will resolve this in nearly all cases over the next couple of years. The fact that the cheapest cost for basic access devices is likely to become affordable for nearly all households does not resolve all the problems in this area and some remain that need a policy response.

In particular there is a concern about market dominance by a small number of large companies that may act against the consumer interest.

This has already attracted attention in the consumer electronics sector where a small number of large multiple retailers has a firm grip on the high street. The limitation this can impose is seen in the area of digital television products. The large retailers do not offer a wide choice of devices for receiving free-to-air digital television but only have products requiring a subscription to pay television. The advent of integrated digital television sets may widen choice, but the Consumers Association has pointed to quality problems with these meaning they are not always a good deal for the consumer.

The problems of limited choice are also found in the content provision sector for digital television. If we are assuming that many people will access the internet through their digital television provider then more attention needs to be paid to way in which a small number of large companies currently control these access channels and tie customers into their own offerings.

The other area of major concern is that of dominance in the software market. This has tended to focus on the well-known challenges to Microsoft in the personal computing sector.

The reality is that there is a tension between the competing demands of customers in the technology sector. They want to have a range of innovative products on offer at the best possible prices. They also want these products to work with each other.

The desire for common standards has created the conditions for companies to gain dominant market positions by selling enough of a product to make it the de facto standard. This creates a situation with the potential for abuse by the dominant supplier that must be of concern.

Traditional remedies for dealing with market abuse have often proved to be of limited use in this area due to the rapid pace of development and its highly technical nature. There is a requirement for public policy to respond to this by seeking new solutions.

In terms of the internet access debate generally, the focus has now shifted away from the costs of devices to what has in many ways always been the weakest link in the internet, the physical connection to the access device. The internet initially took off in universities who have invested in their own fast telecommunications links. It then expanded into the general consumer market where many people only have access to a traditional telephone line into their house, know as a PSTN (Public Service Telephony Network) line. In the UK, the vast majority of these are still in the hands of the former national monopoly supplier.

These lines have only provided fairly slow access to networks. These are good enough for sending and receiving text at speeds that match the human ability to process (i.e. read or write) the material. Recent developments have also led to the ability to transmit sound to a high standard if it is properly manipulated in software. It seems ironic that it has taken time to send sound properly over a telephone line that is designed for sound transmission. This reflects the extra burden and complexity of using a global network system like the internet rather than the limited tasks of a traditional voice telephone network, as well as the additional sound quality requirements of material like music rather than just talking voices.

There are still very serious limitations in the transmission of pictures, either complex still pictures or even more problematically moving video images. This requires lots of information to pass down the line to the receiving device in a very short space of time if the images are to keep up with the speed in which the human eye processes them (i.e. scans a still image and moves on or watches a video).

There is general acceptance that the technology used by most people currently for sending information down the telephone lines will never be good enough for visual applications like video. So, they are turning to other technologies that have been developed over recent years. These allow much more information to travel over the channel into your home or office and are know as “Broadband” to distinguish them from the older methods that are knows as “Narrowband”. They could as easily be called “high capacity” and “low capacity” with the capacity being in terms of “bandwidth”.

The market for this high capacity access to the internet is still developing very rapidly and there are a number of different channels which can be used to deliver it, such as the normal telephone line, a cable company line, satellite and mobile. Many people will use these other channels such as cable, if it is in their area, or mobile. But it does seem likely that for many people the preferred method of access will be via their ordinary (PSTN) telephone line.

This sort of access is at the heart of much of the current debate. The UK has already made historic investment in putting wires into most homes and offices in the country by. These wires can now be used to deliver broadband internet access. The questions revolve around what the best model is for doing this when the lines are currently owned by one of the companies offering this service but could potentially be used by many other companies wanting to offer a competing service.

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