Published: April 27, 2026 at 8:20 am
Last week, the Telegraph reported a headline that should stop every policymaker in their tracks: “Mobile data could be rationed to tackle soaring costs of Iran war.”
The instinct will be to debate whether they should have been included in the Chancellor’s Industrial Competitiveness Scheme. That’s the wrong conversation.
Because the real question this headline forces is a more uncomfortable one: why, in 2026, in one of the largest economies in the world, is “rationing” even a word we’re applying to connectivity? And why are we still relying on commercial operators — whose first obligation is to shareholders, not citizens — to deliver what is, by any reasonable measure, essential public infrastructure?
This isn’t a case for bailing out the companies, considering rationing. It’s a case for building infrastructure they can’t ration.