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Labour pledges free broadband for all homes and firms in UK
- tomp 7y agoporn and VPN (to allow unfiltered internet) is charged extra though!
- cyborgx7 7y agoThat's a Tory policy. Let's hope a Labour Government would also get rid of that.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago> Let's hope a Labour Government would also get rid of that No forethought to what a future Tory government would do after the nation’s infrastructure are put under direct governmental control?
- cyborgx7 7y agoSo the reason not to vote for Labour is that the Tories are too evil and can't be trusted?
- throwaway123x2 7y agoThe reason to avoid (ostensibly good Labour) government overreach is that you can't trust the Tories when they're in power.
- commiecosmonaut 7y agoLabour was quite upset when the porn block was canceled: > Labour attacked that announcement as “proof that an important policy issue has descended into utter shambles”. And in 2013: > David Cameron must bring in laws to restrict access to internet pornography and stop images of child abuse from being available online, Labour will say today. > However, Labour is challenging the Government to go further by bringing in new legal protections, including an automatic block on online pornography unless users "opt-in" and a tighter obligation on web companies to weed out images of child abuse. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/10114845/Labour-challenges-David-Cameron-to-bring-in-anti-pornography-laws.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/10114845/La...
- thinkingemote 7y agoI would expect Labour to put in place more blocks around things to protect the population against "extremist" content but porn would probably be ok for a while.
- robjan 7y agoSince there are multiple competing fibre companies, won't nationalising one company and offering "the fastest fibre free to all" bankrupt all of the other companies?
- cyborgx7 7y agoAnd it would lead to everybody having the fastest fibre for free. What is wrong with bankrupting companies that aren't needed anymore?
- ablation 7y agoAt a guess, I would hazard the thousands of people who would become unemployed? And not all be able to immediately go and work for the 'British Broadband Corporation'? That's one negative side effect.
- cyborgx7 7y agoSo we should have worse, more expensive internet instead, to keep people in positions that aren't necessary? That seems like a terrible idea. Presumably a Labour Manifesto with this policy in it, would also include a bunch of provisions for unemployed people.
- ablation 7y agoPresumably taxing people more to support them? I don't have a dog in this fight. But probably wise not to infer there aren't negative consequences if all bar one broadband companies get shuttered in a country.
- cyborgx7 7y agoI would gladly vote for paying all employees of all ISPs their current salary from taxes for a while, if it meant free, nationalized fast fiber in every home.
- thecopy 7y agoFree in this context is that everyone who already pays for broadband will still pay for it through increased taxes.
- lentil_soup 7y agowell, it does say it will be funded by a new tax on tech companies
- C1sc0cat 7y agoThey will increase the line rental and standing charges to cover the cost.
- ollie87 7y agoI mean, that's how the NHS works and we generally pay less for that than Americans do for their healthcare.
- entropea 7y agoMost already pay essentially a private tax for internet. It's quite necessary in some form in 2019 in a western society.
- randomsearch 7y agoUntrue. From what I hear this is about getting a base level of fibre to everyone; some will pay for more.
- jotm 7y agoCalling it now: not happening. Just like half of their current election promises. Doubling down on predictions: Labour loses.
- mcny 7y ago> Calling it now: not happening. Just like half of their current election promises. Do we still have the list of things that the Tories under David Cameron promised Scotland? What happened to that?
- eeZah7Ux 7y agoWhy such bad grammar?
- jotm 7y agoIt's getting cold in Moscow
- thinkingemote 7y agoIf Labour gets in I hope they use the nationalised internet to block russian fake news! We need a firewall to protect us from Tory and Trump's friends (Satire, but not far from the party line as Labour supporters also cry fake news these days)
- rvz 7y agoWell BT is available in all areas in the UK except for Kingston-Upon-Hull which has it's own broadband provider called KCOM which is enjoys a complete monopoly in the area with the city having fibre-optic in all areas. I wonder if this policy that given that it creates free-access to the internet but in the end it also creates a huge monopoly similar to KCOM that kills competition with the added bonus of only the biggest earners footing the bill + taxes dramatically rise due to this. As for the competition, Labour is fine for bankrupting them and what happens if the FAANG companies cannot pay any more or start to relocate due to other economic events such as Brexit, financial crash, etc? How will they continue to fund this initiative? The astronomical cost of this on the tax-payer and with the current UK economical uncertainty due to Brexit makes this sound hopelessly utopian for a Labour Government to implement I'm afraid.
- C1sc0cat 7y agoThey do strike me as the sort of teachers pets who used to little playlets at assembly about "issues" who they have vaguely heard about. There idea of employee shares is held in trust and taxed at 75% But if we are renationalising the UK's telecom system then cough I have a few questions what about the crown guarantee, Section A Pensioners, And of course those of us like me in Tymnet getting "screwed" by hr out of pay and the BT pension scheme - maybe Vint Cerf could get subpoenaed
- kevingadd 7y ago"astronomical cost of this on the tax-payer" is absurd. Who's having costs go up significantly as a result of free internet service being provided? You already have to pay for internet from a private provider, if you replace that with government-operated internet your internet is funded by taxes - but the government can tax corporations instead of individuals to avoid raising direct costs for any individual taxpayer, which they're doing!
- makomk 7y agoEveryone's costs are going to go up significantly as a result of replacing broadband that mostly uses existing infrastructure with a program of ripping up every street in the country and installing new fibre optic connections to every house. Making it "free" and taxpayer-funded just means that there's no way to opt out of paying if the existing broadband is fast enough.
- redorb 7y agoWhen will people understand nothing is free. There will be no true equality until we're all equally poor.. that is until free energy / replicators, Star trek technology.
- commiecosmonaut 7y agoEven in Star Trek, there were admirals, and there were ensigns. There were First Chancellor of the Planet, and common folks.
- iamben 7y agoMaybe scrap HS2 and spend the money on this instead? Seems a better use of however many billion we're up to and would probably make more of a difference...
- C1sc0cat 7y agoWhy suddenly giving 100% of Britain 100mbs BB wont do much for the national productivity. That money would be better spent else where, better vocational training - Rebuilding the countries ability to say be able to make its own pistol or rifle Can you see the spending round where the Postmaster General competing against the other departments for more funding for police or the NHS vs subsidising BB.
- randomsearch 7y agoI think you can 10x that bandwidth from what I hear.
- C1sc0cat 7y agoFor every subscriber I think not
- jacknews 7y agoThey couldn't put out a worse message. I very much support their search for an alternative to monetarism (surely now completely discredited), the inevitable gross inequality of pure capitalism, the failure of markets to deliver good societies, and so on, but this just reeks of a return to "old socialism".
- lucifirius 7y ago"free" okay but where does the money come from?
- commiecosmonaut 7y agoRich peoples pockets (the few)?
- lucifirius 7y agoA finite resource (not even a resource!) that people will wonder where they went after everything falls apart.
- entropea 7y agoPresumably that money goes back into the pockets of everyday people who then spend it in an ever revolving churn of money which keeps capitalism working. If your economy is held up by rich people and rich people alone, your economy probably sucks.
- kevingadd 7y agoWhat exactly makes 'rich people's money' a finite resource? Where do you think their money comes from? If you look at the average billionaire, their wealth trends up even if they're giving big chunks of it away - Bill Gates is richer now than he was when he started giving away huge piles of his money, because for a rich person wealth is (unless you're literally lighting it on fire) not trivially exhaustible. Many countries previously have had high tax rates on the rich (upwards of 50%) and those rich people still managed to avoid being poor. It would be another matter if their plan was proposing to cut off rich people's income - but their plan doesn't even touch rich people, it is funded by corporations. Even if you were to institute a 2% wealth tax to fund public internet, the rich would still stay very, very rich because it's possible to keep earning money off your remaining wealth through investments and other means.
- entropea 7y ago>BT would be part nationalised under £20bn scheme funded by new tax on tech companies I would suggest reading the article, even the subheadline right where your eyes first focus had you even opened the link.
- s_dev 7y agoEU has just approved Irelands National Broadband Plan, which has been characterized by delays and beaurucracy since it's inception. https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/broadband-timeline-how-did-we-get-here-1.4084052 https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/broadband-tim... It hopes to connect .5 million rural homes (private ISPs won't touch them generally) for about €3 Billion Euro over the next few years. It's insightful to compare the two approaches.
- FormFollowsFunc 7y agoIn Ireland we’re still in the let’s privatise everything phase that the UK went through in the 80s. It’s now falling out of favour in the UK. They’re trying to connect every home in rural Ireland at great cost even through research found that only a fraction will take it up.
- Normal_gaussian 7y agoThe history of Internet provision "for all" in the UK is atrocious. Massive government handouts followed by private companies that had lobbied for them failing to meet their promises is a summary. I can't see a nationalisation resolving the issues though, especially not with the paltry numbers being bandied around. I could see better regulation and forced separation of concerns achieving a lot however. That said, Internet issues are not the major problem of our times. These issues are a distraction from those of first past the post voting and a collapse in journalistic quality.
- ollie87 7y agoI suppose one argument for it is that it's easier to regulate it if you own it.
- pjc50 7y ago> Massive government handouts followed by private companies that had lobbied for them failing to meet their promises is a summary. That's basically it. OpenReach is the Network Rail of ADSL. Often Openreach would take millions of subsidy for rural broadband buildouts and then do .. nothing. While I think nationalisation may be a step too far, I think it's useful to move the conversation away from endless privatised failure. If nothing else has worked, let's try threatening Openreach until service improves.
- johnnycab 7y ago>That's basically it. >If nothing else has worked, let's try threatening Openreach until service improves. That is basically NOT it and issuing random threats to incumbent telcos, whilst contemporaneously empowering them is definitely not the solution. The shameless politicking does not address how to fund the empty promises. The article in essence is debating whether or not, Labour (2030) vs Cons (2025) pledge of "full-fibre Broadband" is a plausible one ie. the former is offering free access to the walking dead, and the latter shamelessly targeting it's base minority of curtain twitching shires, and neither of these parties know how to solve the wider and complex implications of engaging with businesses or how to implement any technical plans. Meanwhile the idea of nationalising Openreach (BT) under public ownership is a much more complicated issue (i.e. its impact upon pensions, the question of who takes on BT’s massive debt pile (the public?), shareholders, competition etc.) and one that is likely to result in plenty of legal challenges (this could hamper the fibre rollout until settled). Not to mention a lengthy debate over whether that by itself would result in a better market. https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2019/11/2020-labour-party-pegs-20bn-to-deploy-free-full-fibre-for-all.html https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2019/11/2020-labour-pa...
- wjoe 7y agoSo a few things to note on this: This isn't an entirely new idea. BT was privatised in the 1980s, and before that had been run as a government department, and later as part of the Post Office, a public company but still under the control of the Government. At that early stage, the UK had some of the best internet infrastructure in the world, and had plans to roll out FTTH. Then Thatcher became PM, privatised BT, cancelled the fibre rollout plans, and encouraged more competition in the hopes that would improve investment. Well, 30 years later and we still have < 10% FTTH coverage. (Source: https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost-the-broadband-race-in-1990-1224784 https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-l...) Internet infrastructure is in weird state here. Thanks to BT's legacy as a public/nationalised company, they still own the vast majority of infrastructure and cables. This was sort of spun out into a separate company (Openreach) to BT the ISP, but they are widely considered inefficient and disinterested in improving the infrastructure, and they're still a subsidiary of BT. In theory this move was to increase competition, but it hasn't done a lot. There's only one major ISP (Virgin) that truly competes with BT, built their own infrastructure, and ran their own cables, almost every other ISP just leases the lines from Openreach and sells their own services on top of that. I tend to agree that nationalising Openreach (the infrastructure and cables) is a good idea, to increase internet speeds and coverage across the country - rural areas tend to have very slow speeds as it's not in the interests of BT and Virgin to improve the infrastructure for a handful of customers in that area. I'm not so convinced that providing free high speed fibre internet connections to everyone is a necessity or a good use of government money. I feel like nationalising Openreach but keeping the existing model of ISPs building services on top of the infrastructure makes sense, and public infrastructure would reducing the costs of leasing those lines, a saving that could hopefully be passed on to customers. I'm not sure how this would affect companies like Virgin who do own their own infrastructure though, would they then be competing with the government? There's of course a privacy concern to the government owning the internet infrastructure too. While the UK government has already had some pretty draconian policies, and they can force ISPs to comply, they've struggled to implement some of their more "ambitious" censorship policies, in part due to it being difficult to get all of the ISPs to come to an agreement on how to implement them. If the government owns the infrastructure, it's easier for them to implement surveillance and censorship at a lower level, harder to circumvent with VPNs and the like. Internet surveillance and censorship are generally policies of the Conservative party, rather than the Labour party who are proposing this, so I don't think there's any malicious intent with this proposal, but if a left wing government nationalises the internet this year, what's to stop a right wing government of the future using this new found control to implement stronger surveillance/censorship in 5 years? All in all, I'm on the fence about this policy, although I do think some steps in this direction would be positive. And if you've been paying any attention to British politics in the last few years, you'd know there's even more complexities that what I mentioned here.
- cjg 7y agoThis is not a good idea. We are very close to having a competitive market for broadband in the UK. Efficient markets are better than central government planning. What's needed is some light regulation to push the market towards being fully competitive.
- jamespetercook 7y agoWould nationalising the broadband provider remove a barrier to increased surveillance?
- randomsearch 7y agoThis is AFAICT the only genuine argument against the policy. But it’s being drowned out by hysteria over nationalising openreach, an omnishambles of an organisation if there ever was one.
- thinkingemote 7y agoIt would probably remove barriers to censorship. Both main parties are reasonably hostile to free speech but Labour (or it's supporters) seem to me to be more hostile to "fake news" etc