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Why this site?
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Cable and Wireless Watch is part of an issue of national importance: the Watch covers the specific issue and the Campaign for Unmetered Telecommunications (CUT) the general one.
Read the following quote from the UK Education Internet Primer first edition (thanks to Nick Mailer for permission to use it):
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The choice for the UK is clear. We can, if we wish, be at the heart of the Internet revolution. We have the language and the tradition of the yeoman inventor. We have a viable national curriculum and relative political stability. We must not throw all this positive potential away by continuing to ride in our deepening rut of cultural parsimony. The metered phone-line, even with the compromise solution of ISDN, is not conducive to broad and effective communication. The underfunded higher education network infrastructure is a disgrace. No cohesive network policy exists for school education. Our pupils, then, instead of learning from the give and get of online experience, acquire little from our metered meanness beyond the diminution of communicative spirit, the quick fix mentality and a fearful reluctance to explore alternatives beyond the daily snatched glimpses of a world in evolution. The politician who backs her or his rhetoric with genuine substance in this area will walk tall in the cultural fruition that ensues.
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Okay, it's a bit Rooseveltian - 'all we have to fear is metering itself'. But have a look at your hard disk. How many of the packages there come from the UK? Not many I bet - in my case, three out of almost sixty. That is something to be ashamed of.
The Internet is the medium of the future: can this country afford not to have Internet access for all who want it?
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Text by Nick Mailer and Alastair Scott
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 Cable and Wireless Watch main page
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