Yesterday the UK Government, in the middle of saving the Brits  from the worst recession since 1946, found time to issue Digital Britain: The Interim Report - Government outlines plans for UK’s digital transition, which lays out a framework for evolving digital communications. The report was led by Lord Carter who seems to have made an entire career career out of issuing lengthly government reports.

Among the plans are proposals to extend the Universal Service Obligation to broadband by 2012 and mandate a minimum speed of 2Mbits/sec. There are also proposals to place a levy on broadband to compensate digital rights holders for piracy.

Looked at through the strangely distorting glasses that most governments seem to wear, these may sound sensible ideas. But wait, the last time government ran communications was in 1984 when there were waiting lists for party lines, clockwork switching and it cost a week’s pay to call the US. Since then, freed from the dead hand of governments around the world, the communications industry has boomed everywhere, putting cheap, reliable communications with the reach of even the poorest people on the planet.

Except for one area that they just can stop tinkering – access networks. Most regulators copy each other’s ideas and the UK government has had its fair share of brilliant ideas on how to fiddle with the access market. The net result – the only part of the communications industry that Alexander Graham Bell would recognize – decades old access infrastructure based on copper rather than fiber because any economic incentive to invest has been stripped away.

So now, instead of learning the lesson and letting the market flow, we get another 5 year tractor production plan to force universal service at 2MBits. Erm excuse me Lord Carter, have you seen what’s happening with video streaming and download growth rates? 2 Mbits is already totally inadequate for any usable IPTV service and in 3 years time will be laughable. What we need is ubiquitous to the home fibre and 4G wireless  and we need an economic climate to make that happen as soon as possible.

So instead of government mandated economic layering lunacy upon lunacy, why not just let normal market economics do the job – get rid of the distortions that prevent capital flowing into access networks (fixed and mobile) and let Moores law do the rest as services drive investment and investment drives services.

As we’ve seen in the recession, governments are pretty poor at predicting the future and the history of government management of communications is even worse. So why not leave it to the people who really understand this industry to get on with the job .