DRAFT FOR REVIEW · Introduction, chapter teasers and rights notice awaiting Stephen’s approval.

From GSM to Digital TV — the battles, breakthroughs and near misses

Casting the Nets

The connected world did not arrive by a straight road. Behind mobile phones, digital television and broadband were people with competing ambitions, difficult choices and opportunities that could easily have slipped away. In Casting the Nets, Stephen Temple draws on his own part in major decisions and his close working relationships with the people shaping them. He takes readers into the arguments, alliances and unexpected turns that carried communications from an expensive privilege into everyday life.

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What is inside

We think of the digital world as a single revolution. Yet mobile phones, television, radio and the internet each followed a very different path. Did one breakthrough trigger another, like falling dominoes? Or were the real connections between the people, political battles and unexpected decisions behind them? Follow these seven stories to discover how the digital world came together.

Part 1Mobile Communications

AN UNPROMISING START
When mobile telephones belonged to a privileged few, the idea of connecting people rather than cars opened a different future.
UK SEEDS OF THE NEW BEGINNING
A new desk at the DTI, a departing colleague and a crowded international agenda: the beginnings of a much larger undertaking.
GETTING THE UK’S INDUSTRIAL ACT TOGETHER
French and German research programmes were gathering pace. How could Britain’s manufacturers find a place in the emerging European project?
THE TRIPARTITE AGREEMENT ON DIGITAL CELLULAR RADIO
An invitation to cooperate posed an awkward choice: influence the project from within, or risk committing too soon.
BERLIN – BLOOD ON THE FLOOR
In Berlin, agreement on a permanent team quickly became a contest over who would lead it—and whose ideas would prevail.
THE QUADRIPARTITE AGREEMENT
A conversation over dinner offered a route into European cooperation. Turning that opening into an agreement would take more than goodwill.
GETTING OUR MAN INTO THE SEAT
Finding the right person was only half the task. A discreet telephone call opened a delicate campaign for support.
GSM FREQUENCY CHANNELS AND THE DELUGE
Analogue mobile services were booming. Their appetite for radio channels threatened the space reserved for a system still being built.
MRS THATCHER AND THE EU COUNCIL GET INVOLVED
Technology choices became industrial politics, drawing ministers and European leaders into the struggle over GSM’s future.
THE TECHNOLOGY CHOICES – THE EASY BIT
The field trials promised answers. First came a more difficult question: what should count as the winning result?
VODAFONE’S SECOND ASSAULT ON THE GSM CHANNELS
A request to borrow radio channels sounded temporary. Its consequences for the European project could be much harder to reverse.
THE ROAD TO MADEIRA
Before positions hardened, one last comparison tested the case for the competing systems that would meet in Madeira.
A WEEK IN MADEIRA CAN BE A LONG TIME
A meeting on an Atlantic island became the setting for a decision that could unite Europe—or leave its mobile future divided.
IT NEVER RAINS BUT IT POURS
After Madeira, carefully judged approaches to France and Germany met old grievances and new complications.
MANOEUVRING BEHIND THE SCENES
An industrial roadshow set out to overturn the emerging consensus. Behind the technical arguments, diplomacy became decisive.
PATTIE DEFUSES THE UK GSM FREQUENCY CHANNEL ROW
A midnight discussion over whisky brought Britain’s frequency dispute into the open. A minister would have to find a way through.
THE TURNING POINT – BONN MEETING OF MINISTERS
With an election campaign under way at home, a ministerial meeting in Bonn offered a chance to turn fragile cooperation into commitment.
THE GSM MOU – GSM GETS A TURBO BOOST
In Venice, the challenge was to write an agreement that could make competitors work together without extinguishing competition.
FROM GSM TO PERSONAL COMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS
New mobile ideas were multiplying. The harder challenge was finding a route from promising technology to a mass market.
FROM CONSULTATION TO COMPETITION
A competition for new operators raised a pointed question: should an established contender be allowed to bypass it?
GSM’S EXPANDING UNIVERSE
The next mobile revolution depended on more than an engineering breakthrough. Spectrum and competition supplied their own explosive force.
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
A buzzing hearing aid revealed a problem nobody had intended. Success brought consequences beyond the original plan.

Part 2Digital TV Broadcasting

FLIPPING FROM AN ANALOGUE TO A DIGITAL TV FUTURE
Europe risked locking itself into an analogue television future. A narrow window opened for a very different direction.
DRIVING DIGITAL TV PLATFORM POLICY FROM THE DTI
The DTI did not control broadcasting policy. An open brief and a willing industry contact offered a way to begin.
SHOWDOWN ON WHO DECIDES THE TV CHANNELS VIEWERS CAN WATCH
A Broadcasting Bill became the battleground for a deceptively simple question: who should decide what viewers could watch?
IGNITING AND RE-IGNITING DIGITAL CABLE TV
A move from Whitehall into cable television brought new ambitions, risks and a fresh encounter with the realities of digital TV.

Part 3Sound Broadcasting

DIGITISING BRITAIN’S SOUND BROADCASTING NETWORKS
More room for programmes appealed to the BBC. Other broadcasters saw a new bill to pay. A digital radio policy had to confront both.

Part 4Broadband Internet

ACCELERATING THE ROLL-OUT OF BROADBAND INTERNET IN THE UK
Always-on broadband was stirring in America while Britain remained comfortable with dial-up. What would get the UK moving?

Part 5Revolutionising European Standards Making

DESIGNING THE PERFECT STANDARDS BODY
A few lines in a European policy paper opened the possibility of a new standards institution—and a different way of working.
TURNING THE ETSI VISION INTO A CREDIBLE REALITY
From the chair of a crowded assembly, turning a vision into a working institution required listening, judgement and timely coffee breaks.

Part 65G Pioneer Bands

MY ROLE IN THE 5G PIONEER BANDS THAT CHANGED THE DIRECTION OF 5G IN EUROPE
Headline-grabbing speeds pulled attention towards very high frequencies. The debate over coverage would help change 5G’s direction.

Part 7Best Left Unsaid (the failures)

THE 1977 BROADCASTING SATELLITE ORBIT PLAN
A worldwide satellite plan promised fair shares of the sky. Reconciling equal opportunity with extravagant demands was another matter.
THE BIGGEST INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS (IPR) CROSS-LICENSING DEAL EVER ATTEMPTED
A patent dispute that seemed containable spread across industries and borders, testing the limits of European cooperation.
DIGITALISING THE PLAIN OLD TELEPHONE SERVICE
A digital telephone initiative once seemed certain to succeed. Divergent standards and lost time tell a more complicated story.

Part EightConclusions

The Ten Rules
After decades of breakthroughs, difficult decisions and costly mistakes, what lessons should policymakers remember? Stephen Temple draws on his experience to set out ten rules for keeping a nation's telecommunications infrastructure world-class.
Dedications
Stephen Temple acknowledges the family, friends and colleagues who helped bring this book into being, along with the permission that made its publication possible.

Foreword

A long-time friend who worked for me at the Department for Trade and Industry (DTI) used to tell people who marvelled at what I’d achieved with the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM)… ‘You should see his list of failures!’ A fair point or an unrealistic view of innovation in high technology?

There are many reasons why things fail, but the most common is to miss the ‘time window’ for change. Too soon and nobody is ready to listen; too late and something else has filled the space. It sounds simple to get right, but it is not. If things are not already moving before it becomes obvious that the time window has opened… it is already too late. Success requires a willingness to anticipate and take risks.

The biggest difference I observed working in the public and private sector was the attitude to risk. In the Civil Service, every failure tends to be picked up by the political opposition and the media to attack the government of the day. In the private sector, shareholders and the media are generally more tolerant of failure providing the company gets enough things right to sustain profits. It leaves the public-sector risk averse and seeking evidence before making decisions. But evidence can only come from the past, and disruptive technology always comes from the future.

The period 1984–2004 was characterised by the UK government and private sector looking to the future, taking the risks, improving their own luck by working cooperatively together and moving fast enough to hit the time window for change. They may not have got everything right, but they got enough things right to successfully forge Britain’s ‘digital edge’ for the next generation to have their chance to make a success of the digital age.

Describing the role of government and companies in these large initiatives never adequately reveals what goes into delivering successful outcomes. Things never go to plan and often there are conflicting plans that pull in different directions. It comes down to the leadership of individual people and their integrity, relationships, determination, energy and flair for creative solutions. All these qualities were needed to turn some near disasters into successes with the various digital technology initiatives and, in the case of GSM mobile technology, into global dominance and the emergence of a trillion-dollar industry.

The accounts in Section A provide “real world” insights into the machinations that go on behind the scenes to create the conditions for success. I picked-up many of the insights guiding my decisions from the very smart colleagues I was privileged to work with along the way. It therefore proved to be quite challenging, after completing the accounts, to stand-back and identify the most important insights and compress them into a general philosophy for successful infrastructure interventions. The result is presented in The Ten Rules – the ten rules for policy makers to keep a national telecommunications infrastructure world-class.

Professor Stephen Temple CBE FREng CEng FIET

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