Jonathan Mepsted

The great British broadcaster Alan Partridge once proposed an innovative programme idea for television called Monkey Tennis. Although more varied, less predictable and arguably better TV viewing than normal tennis, the idea was shelved over some pretty sketchy concerns that the monkeys would never be up to the job.

In internet service provision, if an end user customer catches cholera that is their problem.

Many industry professionals sensibly opt to converse in analogies, simplifying the clear-as-mud world of four letter acronyms to instead – for example - paint the world of broadband as a motorway with dirt track off-ramps, and draw parallels between airlines and telcos to describe the highly differentiated services-led approaches needed to combat the commoditization of bandwidth.