The chief
executive of BT, Ben Verwaayen, is warning the UK to pull its
finger out or else face the great Indian takeaway, writes Simon
Moores.
Ben
Verwaayen, chief executive of BT, mixed words of encouragement for
the UK as Europe's strongest economy, with a clear warning that we
have to "wake up" or risk falling behind countries such as India,
which are successfully leveraging their cheap labour force and
education system to create a knowledge economy to challenge our
own.
Verwaayen was
addressing an audience of MPs, shadow technology minister, Michael
Fabricant and the leading IT suppliers at a Conservative Technology
Forum event at St Stephen's Club, London, last week.
He said, "Two weeks
ago, I was in India, visiting a couple of Bill Gates equivalents,
both serious developers. India does not have one Bill Gates, it has
five."
While India is a
paradox with so many millions of people living without any contact
with modern technology, it has double the amount of people, living
at UK standards or above.
"In Bangalore, I
visited a fantastic campus with 15,000 young people, with an
average age of 24, average month's salary, £500 [£273], and average
qualification MBA plus," said Verwaayen.
"In 1988, India
exported $50m in IT services. Last year, India exported $15bn and
these are not the call centres that everyone talks and worries
about. This is knowledge.
"It is a fact that we
are going to live in a world where aid will be replaced by trade
but the problem is that we are not ready for it. We are sleeping at
the wheel.
"We worry over
exporting our jobs to India and China and we believe that our
universities are better than others. Think again.
"We think we have a
system that gets the best out of people and makes them productive.
Think again. We all have a computer but your computer is worthless
unless you use it as an instrument to compete and you need advanced
networks to compete," said Verwaayen.
He pointed to the
movie Finding Nemo as an example of international cooperation using
advanced networking. The film was made in three separate studios in
real time, Israel, Bristol and California, as the artists
collaborated on each frame.
"So, what you see
happening now is the ability to connect best in class with best in
class completely independent of distance and location,"
said Verwaayen.
He warned that
the economy of the world will continue revolve around consumers
buying the best possible quality for the lowest possible price and
businesses are no different. "There is no point in turning around
to your politicians in five years time and asking where the
employment has gone," he said.
"If you want to stay
competitive you need to look at the opportunity triangle again. On
each of the three sides you have knowledge, entrepreneurial skills
and costs and in the middle you have networks.
"In the UK, BT is
spending £10bn to build the end-to-end IP network we need to make
certain, that with a click of a mouse, you can compete with
everyone else in the world," said Verwaayen.
He implied that BT
was providing the tools but it was up to government to do the rest.
"This is a fast changing landscape and we should be learning from
Germany, where in a short space of time, four million jobs have
slipped over the border to the new members of the European Union,
proving that in Germany, at least, the triangle does not work."
Sending his wake-up
call to politicians of all parties, he concluded, "It is time that
the UK looked very closely at its own triangle."
Shadow technology
minister, Michael Fabricant said, "BT is to be congratulated with
the rapid roll-out of broadband, though there are still questions
of the speed of the connection - 512kbps will not be the standard
of the future.
"BT enjoys a virtual
monopoly position in the UK and Ben Verwaayen has recognised this
by dramatically reducing the costs of local loop unbundling though
we still lag behind France and Germany. We cannot be
complacent."
In the meantime, he
said the government must ensure that BT is given the same access to
European markets as France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom enjoy in
the UK; at present there is an unfair imbalance.
Sadly, the three
sides of the UK's triangle these days look very like health,
transport and housing, with Iraq stuck firmly in the middle, so
don't hold your breath Ben.
Setting the world
to rights with the collected thoughts and opinions of leading
industry analyst Dr Simon Moores of Zentelligence.
Acting globally,
Zentelligence (Research) advises governments, suppliers, business
and the media on the evolution, application and delivery of
leading-edge technologies, and specialises in the areas of
e-government and information security.
For further
information on Zentelligence and its research, presentation and
analyst services, visitwww.zentelligence.com