City & Business: The phoney war

MPs on the Trade and Industry Select Committee are due to issue their report on the future development of the information superhighwaythis week. It is an important subject. Fibreoptic cable looks destined to do for the 21st century what railways did for the 19th.

It's a complex matter. One wag referred to it last week as the 'disinformation super hype-way'. Understanding is not helped by the royal battle between British Telecom and the cable television companies.

BT wants lifted the ban that prevents it from offering broadcast television services down the cable. This was put in place to nurture competition from cable companies. With this ban out of the way, it would invest pounds 15bn in fibreoptic. BT claims the network would be built sooner, to higher standards, and to a uniform standard.

The cable companies claim that their patchwork quilt is still an effective blanket for all that. And that they are investing - at the rate of pounds 11 2 bn a year - only because of the Government's promise to keep BT at bay.

BT, whose lobbying has been some of the most intense ever seen at Westminster, will eventually get its way. The question is how quickly. Every month it loses another 25,000 traditional phone customers to the cable companies. This is what stings. BT wants reform badly.