The Agenda Setters: IoD chief says UK holds all the ecommerce cards

The UK government could make the country the global leader in the ecommerce arena and steal a march on the US - but only if it exploits mobile technology and m-commerce.

That's the view of Jim Norton, head of ecommerce for the Institute of Directors (IoD) in an exclusive Agenda Setters interview for Silicon.com.

US firms are oblivious to the threat European companies pose to their dominance of global ecommerce, according to Norton.

"For third generation mobile communications, the focus is Europe. For interactive digital television, the focus is Europe. These are all things that will take the existing paradigm of the Internet onto the next stage - and many Americans don't understand just how much Europe is going to drive that, not them," he said.

As head of ecommerce at the IoD, Norton is aiming to advise British businesses on the challenges of ecommerce. After a career at BT, he produced the Performance and Innovation Unit report ecommerce@itsbest.uk last year, on which the government is now basing its ecommerce strategy.

Norton also criticised BT and said the telecoms operator needs to radically reassess its attitude toward pricing and the rollout of ADSL services.

"It ought to be aggressively offering ADSL. The worry ought to be that it's being so aggressive it's going to put everyone else out of the market, not that it's being so slow and timid in the pricing it's holding ecommerce back."

You can watch the full Agenda Setters interview with Jim Norton in the Ecommerce Channel (http://www.silicon.com/a36780 ).