It is six months since I took up my position as Head of DTI’s BRCII and I am pleased to have this opportunity to welcome you to Telecom Times, our on-line newsletter for the UK’s telecommunications and radio communications sectors.

The last six months has been a most difficult time for the whole sector of course and as I write, the stock market is reflecting further uncertainty about the US economy and about Iraq.  None of this makes it any easier for companies in our sectors.  The global accounting scandals coming after the bursting of the dot COM bubble makes financing any new venture in our sectors a very tricky thing to arrange.

On the other hand there are signs that some things are beginning to move. Residential and small business broadband connections will shortly top the one million mark and despite all the nonsense written in the press about 3G, it seems likely that one company at least will launch a service before the end of the year.  In a few weeks we will announce the results of our international benchmarking exercise that looked at how progress towards e-business in the UK compared with eight other countries.   I cannot pre-empt what Ministers will announce about that, but let me just say that there is good news here too.

Within the DTI we have had our own pressures deriving from the process of implementing the changes to the DTI that resulted from the Reviews commissioned by the Secretary of State Patricia Hewitt and Permanent Secretary Sir Robin Young just after the election.  In BRCII, which is part of the DTI’s Business Relations organisation, we are trying to give effect to the DTI’s new strap-line “Prosperity for All” as far as our sectors are concerned.  To do this we have reorganised the staff of the directorate into new sector teams that are focussed on individual sectors: Communications Networks, International Communications, Electronics, Software & Computer Services, Information Security, Digital Content & Publishing and e-Business.  In addition the UK Online for Business project and the Communications Bill Team are part of BRCII.  These teams share the top-line Vision of “Making a difference through partnership with business” and our Mission is “To improve UK productivity and competitiveness” by:

Building confident and open relations with key companies and organisations;

Developing high quality analysis and understanding of our sectors;

Challenging, and helping, our companies to improve their performance;

Championing our companies’ legitimate interests in Government and elsewhere and

Developing the talents of all of our people so that we are effective, trusted and valued.

We feel this gives us the basis for a new relationship with companies in our sectors and we are working hard on that.  To enable us to be more effective in everything we do, we are embracing new ways of working and looking to cut out all unnecessary bureaucracy both internally and externally.

Whether you as a reader of this are one of our customers, one of our colleagues or one of BRCII’s staff, I hope that you will find the articles in this edition of Telecom Times interesting and thought provoking.

OTHER NEWS:

SOME OTHER UPCOMING EVENTS IN THE TELECOMS INDUSTRY 

PREVIOUS ISSUES

ISSUE 22 / JULY 2002

ISSUE 21 / MARCH 2002

ISSUE 20 / NOVEMBER 2001

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