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The spat highlights a deeper issue: that both ISPs and Ofcom have been so focused on the short-term operation of the network that neither has planned sufficiently for what is now the immediate future. You would expect ISPs to make hay while the sun was still bright in the sky and profit as much as possible from customers who paid for broadband access they only ever used occasionally. But the regulator has no such excuse.

Twenty-odd years after BT started planning its fibre optic network, we still have copper cables, with all their limitations when it comes to shifting high volumes of data, running into our homes. And, thanks

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in part to the blinkered short-termism of Ofcom, they are not likely to be upgraded soon. Again the problem is one of cost. BT says it can't afford to run fibre optic cable to every home in the country. The Universal Service Obligation under which it operates requires it to provide a uniform service across the country. In other words, unless the USO is changed, or someone else contributes toward the cost, it's not going to happen.

There's a theme here. Service providers are quite happy to sell us services that promise the earth as long as we don't use them too often, do anything too useful, or have too much fun. Yet, despite making significant profits during the years when broadband adoption soared while actual usage was minimal, they are unwilling to re-invest those profits in upgrading their networks.

The regulator, on the other hand, seems so determined that it isn't seen to allow BT any sort of unfair advantage that it won't consider changes to an out of date USO that's not only limiting BT, but the rest of the industry. And, not for the first time, it's you and I who are left wondering whether the prospect of unfettered high bandwidth Internet access is someone's idea of a very big joke.