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To: zbyslaw owczarczyk who wrote (12593)	8/9/1999 9:54:00 PM
From: pat mudge	Respond to of 18016

British Gov't accused of discouraging e-commerce: <<<< August 09, 1999 17:51 ****British Govt Said To Be Foot-Dragging On E-Commerce LONDON, ENGLAND, 1999 AUG 9 (NB) -- By Steve Gold, Newsbytes. The British government was criticized today by a committee of its own MPs (Members of Parliament) for its lack of urgency over e-commerce. The Department of Trade and Industry's (DTI's) Select Committee's report, which was published this morning, aimed to look at the wider issues of e-commerce in the UK. The British government published its draft E-Commerce Bill in mid-July. Since, many quarters of the IT industry have accused the government of trying to drown the fledgling e-commerce industry in red tape. The Select Committee's report concluded that there is a ""yawning gap between ambition and achievement" in the promotion of e-commerce, adding that it is concerned at the lack of urgency in turning e-commerce into actual legislation. In addition, the Committee has criticized the British government for its slowness in appointing a so-called "Internet Czar" who would oversee the development of e-commerce in the UK on behalf of the government and industry. The chairman of the committee, Martin O'Neill, told a news conference this morning that there was considerable frustration both inside and outside government that an Internet Czar had not been appointed. O'Neill told reporters that, whoever this person turned out to be, "they should be equipped with hobnailed boots to see that people in government are not just sitting around." The Select Committee has not just criticized the government in its report, but also Oftel, the government's telecommunications regulator, for failing to take a proactive role in Internet access development. The Committee says that it wants to see Oftel encouraging British Telecom (BT) and other carriers in the UK to enable the widespread adoption of wide bandwith services such as ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) and very low-cost or even flat-rate or free access to the Internet. O'Neill said that Oftel started rather late in addressing this issue of opening up the Internet to small businesses and the home user in the UK. "The BT monopoly should be subject to closer scrutiny. If technology enables the breakup of the monopoly and consumers can benefit from that, we feel there ought to be an opening up of the loop. This would allow other companies to offer services over the last mile of copper wire to homes and businesses," he said. The report also criticizes the British government's move in recent times to get government online. It says that the "current plague of costly, late and untested electronic government projects must be tackled before the situation worsens." The Select Committee's report drew approval from Alan Duncan MP, who said in a press statement this afternoon that the conservatives want e-commerce to be encouraged. "The government's bill will impose massive restraints, with regulation and intrusion," he said, adding that the Select Committee is correct in criticizing the government over its handling of e-commerce issues. "The government's published bill is a real restraining influence on business. We have been saying all along that the bill is heavy handed, where a light touch is needed," he said. Peter Sommer, a special advisor to the Select Committee on E-Commerce, told Newsbytes that e-commerce in the UK has now developed to the point where it is political with a small "p." "There is also the very real potential problem of social exclusion," he said, referring to the issue that, unless the e-commerce explosion is not carefully steered, then there is a significant chance that people without access to the high technology needed for e-commerce activities, such as Internet set-top boxes (STBs), will become "have nots." "We need to address problems such as technology access if we are to begin to hope to steer e-commerce down the right path to future prosperity," he said. Details of the Select Committee's report can be found on the Web at parliament.uk . Reported by Newsbytes.com, newsbytes.com .

To: zbyslaw owczarczyk who wrote (12593)	8/9/1999 10:03:00 PM
From: pat mudge	Respond to of 18016

parliament.uk Judging that many internet users are strongly influenced by the cost of local telephone calls, and that unmetered local calls would give electronic commerce a substantial boost, the Committee concludes that OFTEL has been unduly cautious in its view on unmetered local calls, and recommends use of its regulatory powers to encourage innovative tariff packages; and to provide full information to consumers on the comparative costs of these packages and different telephone tariff system. It also calls for swift action to ensure that UK consumers can benefit fully from competition in the computer hardware market. (o,p,q,s) . . . The Committee considers that ensuring that UK firms have a choice of competitively priced high-quality high-bandwidth services should be a priority for OFTEL, and that the opportunity offered by electronic commerce to unlock the potential of the rural economy is not wasted due to the absence of competition in supplying such services to rural areas.(m,n,r)

To: zbyslaw owczarczyk who wrote (12593)	8/9/1999 10:56:00 PM
From: pat mudge	Respond to of 18016

More on MCI/WCOM: MCI Worldcom Upgrades Frame-Relay Network (08/09/99, 8:08 p.m. ET) By Margie Semilof, Computer Reseller News MCI WorldCom will not get specific about the cause of the congestion in its Frame Relay network that is causing problems for large-business customers in many of the carrier's biggest metropolitan areas. The carrier's official stance is that problems started as a result of a switch upgrade, and only about 15 percent of the carrier's network is impacted by the network slowdown. An MCI WorldCom spokeswoman would not say whether the company's problem was similar to what happened at AT&T more than one year ago, and she declined to identify the switch vendor. MCI WorldCom's network was stable even though it was congested, she said. Large-business customers likely would need to consult their service-level agreement contracts to gain restitution for any monetary losses, the spokeswoman said. Paul Wickre, president of Frame Relay Systems and Technology, a consulting company in Washington, D.C., said Frame Relay problems experienced at MCI WorldCom could be ongoing because the carrier has a mixture of products in its network, resulting from its numerous acquisitions. He said MCI Communications had decided in the mid-'90s to buy routers made by Wellfleet, a company that was acquired by Bay Networks and is now absorbed into Nortel Networks. Wickre said most carriers chose to put switches, not routers, into the backbone of their Frame Relay network because switches can blast data without the consuming call setup activity required by routers. WorldCom, which subsequently merged with MCI, also had acquired the telecommunications assets of The Williams Co., which included hardware made by Bay Networks and Stratacom, another networking-hardware company that later was acquired by Cisco Systems, in San Jose, Calif. "The rationale of the MCI WorldCom merger was cost-reduction analysis where you support one platform and one backbone," Wickre said. "You have to migrate users off of one platform onto another."