Re: Denial of own figures - here we go again
...do they just ignore information they don't like, or doesn't fit their political agenda?
I hope you read the second pdf in detail. I quote: Over our modelling period (to 2024), these interventions are projected to return approximately £20 in net economic impact for every £1 of public investment. This is an unusually high level of return for public funding, but we consider it to be realistic, given that broadband is a General Purpose Technology which has an increasingly critical role in the day-to-day operations of the majority of UK businesses. (snip) The bulk of this economic impact comes from improvements in the productivity of broadband-using firms, as illustrated in the chart below, but there are also significant benefits from safeguarding employment in areas which would otherwise be at an unfair disadvantage, from productivity-enhancing time-savings for teleworkers, and from increased participation in the labour force.
The important point to note is that the report relates to business applications for broadband, not domestic / personal use. Now if every potential rural BB user was indeed a business then indeed providing them with genuinely high speed BB would be an investment with significant returns. However, if the rural BB users turned out to be purely or largely domestic users (hey everyone see this cool cat video) then the x 20 multiplier could easily turn out to be a complete fiction.
If I can spot that then so can the government... and so could you, come to think about it.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
