Regardless of his subsequent backtracking, Bland underlined a key strategic question for all former incumbent phone providers across Europe - how are these increasingly embattled telcos going to wring more revenues out of their copper wires?

The former Chairman of the BBC raised plenty of eyebrows in the UK television market with his original statements about creating, managing and distributing media content and services, but within 24 hours Sir Christopher had been properly advised and had revised his words, admitting that BT was not going to become a vertically integrated media company anytime soon.

Bland had only to look south towards Telefonica in Spain to see what might happen if BT tried to do it all, from making to aggregating to distributing content. Telefonica Media (re-named last year as Admira) was originally set up several years ago to reap the benefits of having a content company owned by a dominant telephone carrier.

However, this grand strategic move, which saw Telefonica buy one of Europe's most successful independent production companies - Endemol which created the Big Brother format - has so far not paid off. Last month management was fired and the business is now under review and might be broken up.

The high price paid for Endemol, plus Admira's hodge-podge of assets, which include stakes in both terrestrial channel Antena 3 and a Spanish DTH platform, plus the severe advertising downturn, combined to deliver a net loss of €260 million during the first nine months of 2001.

But even while the business case for the convergence of content and distribution is far from proved, the logic of super-charging the networks telcos already have built is becoming increasingly clear. Mike Wilkinson, who oversees carrier services market development for Alcatel, says that a "second wave" of business analysis is being done right now at telcos across Europe to determine the business rationale for digital subscriber line (DSL) technologies. "The triple play package of services (telephone, Internet and television) is the future and it's not a question of if, but of when," says Wilkinson.

Alcatel is one of the biggest players in DSL, having shipped some 14 million lines worth of kit to date, and the company is currently testing new DSL technologies at a number of telcos around Europe that promise to cut the average cost per user to $600. That's down from $1,200 per user two years ago and the cost could fall another 40 per cent over the course of the next year with the falling prices of DSL modems, says Alcatel.

Alcatel believes that a telco installing this new-fangled DSL kit can see a return on its investment in five years with cash flow positive coming at year three if they achieve a 20 per cent take up of at least two of the 'triple play' services. "The technology and the cash (cost of upgrading the networks) are no longer the problem," says Wilkinson.

The biggest problem is the sales pitch. As the cable operators have discovered to their recent financial pain, the money you spend to build a network has to come back in revenues large enough to make a business case in the near term. "There has been a lot of criticism about BT and some of it is justified, but as a progressive and prudent organisation going forward, they need to make sure that they pour their pounds into something with a reasonable business plan," says Paul Skillen of UK consultancy Logica.

In the UK, the low cost of un-metered narrowband access and the fact that the regulator Oftel keeps BT's prices quite high to stimulate competing networks, make the business case more difficult than in Germany or South Korea, which has the highest penetration of DSL in the world.

In Korea broadband access is sold on its educational value, which the Koreans hold in high regard. The trick then perhaps to selling 'triple play' is to plug broadband services as close as possible into mankind's five essential needs: food, water, shelter, health and safety. Of course you also have to be competitive on price and provide a good service as well as offer the right sorts of content, from games to interactive services to films and - dare I say it - adult services, naturally with appropriate child controls.

Which brings us back to what the telcos are best placed to do in all this. As Sir Christopher belatedly recognised, a telephone company should focus on exploiting its network, not on creating or owning content.

Get the distribution service right, and a telco should be able to increase its revenues and reduce the loss of its traditional customers to cable's 'triple play' option - and that sounds like a good broad-Bland plan.