Carter summer departure confirmed

With 80%+ of todays internet traffic being generated by spam why is this Government taking the blinkered approach of solely addressing the file sharing issue ?

Whereas none of the following issues surrounding spam have been addressed

• the cost to business is huge
• volume of spam traffic clogging up the entire infrastructure
• additional costs to users of anti virus, spam killers etc.
• and so on ...

In reality these are the issues and not whether some 'celeb' gets a few bob reduction in their royalty check this month ! After all if one removes 80% of the rubbish internet traffic then the 'roads' are clearer for everyone to benefit

Frankly providers such as gmail etc. could do a lot more in this area - after all Google seem excessively interested in collecting as much data about people as possible so why don't they put their resources to an alternative use & nail the spammers using their systems ?

Anyway if we are talking about earmarking taxes (Next Generation Fund) can this concept also be applied to road tax, petrol tax etc. - dangerous concept for Governments who have no real understanding of money in the first place (apart from spending)

anyone? 2Mbps smacks of this, to be frank.

Paying £6.50 for an hour's internet access in an hotel is as bad.
As is 3's coverage on mobile internet. Worse than Orange (and that's saying something). Do we mobile workers need a modem for every provider to be sure of getting a signal? (I have 2 so far and counting - guess which!) Or should we just give up and resort to dial up?

Depressing.

I could sense the anti-climax looming over the digital ecosystem from the first thing this morning when an anodyne debate on Radio 4 roped in former BBC chairman Christopher Bland to discuss how the report would threaten the very fabric of the UK's only public service broadcasting organisation.

Adding to my growing torpor was Gordon Brown's scene-setting article in The Times: "Just as the bridges, roads and railways built in the 19th century were the foundations of the Industrial Revolution that helped Britain to become the workshop of the world, so investment now in the information and communications industries can underpin our emergence from recession to recovery..."

Having urged Lord Carter to get stuck into the issues after seeing his draft, I'm afraid that he gamely ploughed the furrows he had already marked out and failed to make a meaningful dent in almost any of the issues that really matter. Internet speeds and capacities? We'll stick to the reasonably limited 2mbps universal access target plucked from the air earlier in the year.

The good lord has fallen prey to the classic Whitehall (or is it New Labour?) habit of dusting off old projects and issues, chewing them over and regurgitating them in a final report running to hundreds of pages. As for new ideas, or proposals that might genuinely change the digital landscape - save your breath.

It really is a sad day for technology and creative industries when the government pushes them forward as a distraction from the embarrassments of MP's expenses. And what can you possibly say about a government that chooses as its digital champion Martha Lane-Fox, someone who so magnificently embodied air-headed Dotcom hype at the beginning of the decade?