
Labour pledges free broadband for all homes and firms in UK - varunvkrishnan
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/14/labour-pledges-free-broadband-for-all-homes-and-businesses-in-uk
======
Normal_gaussian
The 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.

~~~
pjc50
> 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
>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-
pa...](https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2019/11/2020-labour-party-
pegs-20bn-to-deploy-free-full-fibre-for-all.html)

~~~
randomsearch
This is a well researched policy based on the government’s own analysis. I
know people familiar with the current policy framework and (despite not being
Corbyn fans) they think this is a good idea.

~~~
johnnycab
Ah, yes, of course, the super-secret 'CuRrEnT FrAmEwOrK PoLiCy' which you
can't link to or share? By attributing any authority to what is essentially a
loose collection of a government's ambitions, aspirations, pipe dreams and a
random wish list of sorts, is rather fanciful, to say the least. The current
talk of full-fibre broadband is just a manifesto pledge, which has already
been downgraded to _upto_ 'Gigabit broadband' by the Tories. This rhetoric is
reminiscent of 'information superhighway/superfast broadband' buzzwords from
the previous decades to capture urban/rural votes. Similarly, there are no
detailed plans available on how it will be implemented or how any of this
going to get funded ─ which could cost over £30 billion; then the Labour party
are pledging to give it all away for free?!? In the absence of any hard facts,
putting stock in any of these words uttered by someone, who knows somebody
else, who then conducted some research and everybody thought it was a jolly
good idea ─ rings alarm bells and means forgoing privacy in return for
something perceived to be 'free', yet still being majority funded by the
taxpayer.

I will leave you with the USO [Universal Service Obligation] from DCMS (Dept.
for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport) as an amuse bouche on delusions of
grandeur.

[https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/696490/USO_consultation_government_response_28_March_FINAL.pdf)

~~~
randomsearch
By “current policy framework”, I meant the way things are working right now.
The person I was referring to has been involved with policy making all over
the UK, and knows a great deal about the subject. I believe you misinterpreted
this as “labour’s detailed plans.” Just wanted to make that clear.

If you’d have been civil, I would have been happy to ask my contact for
appropriate reading and share them with you. As it is, I feel even responding
is giving a nasty troll too much of my time.

~~~
johnnycab
Firstly, I apologise sincerely, if you felt in anyway whatsoever, that I was
being uncivil. Secondly, it is extremely unfair to label someone a 'nasty
troll', when they have diligently provided official sources as a basis to
conduct a conversation from, versus hearsay.

Last but not least, I accept your offer of sharing the views of your
legitimate contact and a source, which can be used to confirm what you say.

------
thecopy
Free in this context is that everyone who already pays for broadband will
still pay for it through increased taxes.

~~~
ollie87
I mean, that's how the NHS works and we generally pay less for that than
Americans do for their healthcare.

------
robjan
Since 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
And it would lead to everybody having the fastest fibre for free. What is
wrong with bankrupting companies that aren't needed anymore?

~~~
ablation
At 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.

~~~
deogeo
By that logic, we should ban the internet altogether, and thus create more
jobs for postal workers.

~~~
ablation
No, that's incorrect.

------
rvz
Well 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.

~~~
kevingadd
"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
Everyone'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.

~~~
kevingadd
This program isn't "taxpayer funded". It's funded specifically by taxing tech
companies, as is literally stated right below the headline in the article.

~~~
randomsearch
And it should be added than ultimately the tech companies will benefit most
from this: larger markets for streaming and other services.

------
s_dev
EU 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-
tim...](https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/broadband-timeline-how-
did-we-get-here-1.4084052)

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
In 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.

------
tomp
porn and VPN (to allow unfiltered internet) is charged extra though!

~~~
cyborgx7
That's a Tory policy. Let's hope a Labour Government would also get rid of
that.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _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
So the reason not to vote for Labour is that the Tories are too evil and can't
be trusted?

~~~
throwaway123x2
The reason to avoid (ostensibly good Labour) government overreach is that you
can't trust the Tories when they're in power.

------
jamespetercook
Would nationalising the broadband provider remove a barrier to increased
surveillance?

~~~
thinkingemote
It 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

------
lucifirius
"free"

okay but where does the money come from?

~~~
entropea
>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.

~~~
sigillum
Consumers will pay, and not only the direct ones but all people through
inflated prices same as with oil taxes. The funny part is those marxists
already know how much they will steal - 20bn and 'scheme' is a new word for
theft.

------
iamben
Maybe 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
Why 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
I think you can 10x that bandwidth from what I hear.

~~~
C1sc0cat
For every subscriber I think not

------
wjoe
So 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-l...](https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/world-of-tech/how-the-
uk-lost-the-broadband-race-in-1990-1224784))

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.

------
jacknews
They 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".

------
jotm
Calling it now: not happening. Just like half of their current election
promises.

Doubling down on predictions: Labour loses.

~~~
eeZah7Ux
Why such bad grammar?

~~~
jotm
It's getting cold in Moscow

~~~
thinkingemote
If 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)

------
redorb
When 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
Even in Star Trek, there were admirals, and there were ensigns. There were
First Chancellor of the Planet, and common folks.

------
cjg
This 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.

