Another ACE meeting
30 April 2010
As the Member for England on the Panel, I attended this week's meeting of Ofcom's Advisory Committee for England which goes by the delightful acronym ACE. As usual, we had a wide-ranging agenda and some thoughtful discussions with Ofcom staffers.
Ofcom's England Team provided a comprehensive report on their meetings and activities since the last meeting which covered such subject areas as pay television, local commercial radio, provision of local TV news, and Ofcom's work on digital participation including the pilot in the Granada television region to see whether one could build digital inclusion efforts into the programme of digital switchover of television..
We had a political up-date when we were advised on what was and wasn't in the Digital Economy Act and what the various political parties are saying about communications issues; we had a visit from members of Ofcom's Consumer Affairs Team who briefed us on their priority areas of work on consumer empowerment & protection and on access & inclusion; we had an up-date on the roll-out of next generation broadband and a presentation from the Managing Director of Rutland Telecom - a six-person company - which has just delivered super-fast broadband to 200 homes in the village of Lyddington; and there was detailed presentation on the differences between urban and rural communities in the delivery, price and quality of fixed, mobile and broadband services.
On behalf of the Panel, I reported on our most recent discussions, noting particularly our entry into the complicated debate on net neutrality or - to use a less emotive term - traffic management.