Quote:
Originally Posted by Ignitionnet
BT are a great example. Most of the deployment of System X, etc, used private money and in turn the deployment of 21CN and the cross over to all IP network has used private money.
Private companies invest in technology to drive efficiency. The public sector pontificate for a few years, eventually put out tenders, get ripped off wholesale by suppliers or have suppliers bid themselves into bankruptcy and finally deliver projects which fail to reach the original criteria, are late and are over budget at which point they just dip into the tax payer's pocket some more and the people whose project failed to deliver are congratulated and sent off to their next failure or take the job they were promised in return for favouring a supplier.
The private sector doesn't have politicians' whims to win elections to satisfy and doesn't have to deal with a self-serving civil service bureaucracy trying to justify their existence meddling in things. BT's efficiency cost jobs, jobs which may have caused a government a lot of issues had they been perceived as shedding them. Not to mention the horrific state of government procurement.
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The points you make are somewhat after the fact and you are applying conjecture to what may have happened if no privatisation had taken place.
BT was privatised in 1984 and went absolutely nowhere until the early 90s when System X became viable. The manner in which it took advantage of the new technology is as any private company should but without System X it would have stayed stuck in the mud until something appeared. The older but more modern of the older systems had a projected lifespan that for many would still have been in force had System X not appeared.
Although in development for years it was 1992 before there was enough of the system operational to start the mass savings and that was prompted in part by the post mini recession (89\92) savaging of profitability. It was a case of needs must, rather than brilliant strategy which in retrospect it was.
To further your line of debate you would have to show a business that ignored technological advances and has done so on the back of government constraint.