§ Mr. John H. Osbornasked the Secretary of State for Industry what steps he is taking to establish standards for the transmission of vision signals over fibre optics cables; to what extent the adoption of digital standards over long distances will be possible; and how he will resolve this with MAC standards for reception by the receiver in the home.
§ Mr. Kenneth BakerAs my hon. Friend knows the work of the technical working group for standards for wideband cable systems will include, where necessary, the preparation of draft British Standards for all the services that they can anticipate being provided on future cable systems whether in digital or analogue format. Where appropriate they will also produce draft standards to cover the relaying to cable subscribers of the signals transmitted by the United Kingdom direct broadcast satellite which will use the MAC transmission standard.
I understand that the technical working group's sub-group looking at optical fibre is confident that the standards issue will not inhibit the fullest possible use of optical fibre in wideband cable systems.
The trunk interconnection of individual cable networks will be the exclusive province of BT and Mercury. My 179W understanding is that the technical and economic advantages of optical fibre cables for most interconnections are such that both are likely to want to use fibres and probably digital techniques.
It would not be consistent with our approach towards technical matters to impose a specific transmission technique on any of the companies concerned so long as the systems concerned possess the appropriate service capabilities.