In a major announcement tomorrow, Labour will set out plans to deliver free full fibre broadband for all by bringing parts of BT into public ownership and creating a new British Broadband public service.
The next Labour government will undertake a massive upgrade in the UK’s internet infrastructure, delivering fast, secure, reliable internet connections for everyone and putting an end to patchy and slow coverage. This will boost 5G connectivity across the country.
The roll out will begin with communities that have the worst broadband access, including rural and remote communities and some inner city areas, followed by towns and smaller centres, and then by areas that are currently well-served by superfast or ultrafast broadband.
The plan will be paid for through Labour’s Green Transformation fund and taxing multinational corporations such as Amazon, Facebook and Google, and save the average person £30.30 a month.
In an additional bonus, said one Labour wit, Richard Branson is expected to be unhappy.
On a serious note, levelling the playing field in communications and connectivity will be a massive step toward reducing social and regional inequality.
The move is expected to add at least £59 billion to the UK’s economy.
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“In an additional bonus, said one Labour wit, Richard Branson is expected to be unhappy.”
For that alone, everyone should vote Labour 🙂
No doubt the bastard will sue, just like when he lost his NHS contract.
Lovely idea – though why free broadband provision to all citizens, regardless of means, has been selected as the fundamental ‘free social good’ – rather than , say, water , or electricity, is a mystery to me. I think our poorer citizens might prioritise different ‘essentials’ for a massive government subsidy !
Also , unfortunately, despite a lot of ignorant supposed ‘experts being quoted in The Guardian, claiming that EU rules would not prohibit the nationalisation of the entire broadband network (and by the free provision automatically put out of business all current commercial suppliers, such as Virgin Media, TalkTalk and CityFibre,), in fact EU competition and state aid rules DEFINITELY make this promise impossible to implement. The likes of Virgin , etc, would be straight round to the courts (the UK courts – which act for the ECJ in enforcing EU law) to get huge compensation for ‘profits lost’.
Add to the impossibility of this policy proposal, the equal impossibility of promises to re-nationalise the railways and power and water utilities under EU law, and we have the complete political cognitive dissonance of our Party about the EU writ large , ie, our Left Liberal solidly Remain Left Liberal membership wants all those lovely Left Wing policies, but wants desperately to stay inside the very neoliberal legal construct, the EU, which makes them impossible !
Don’t get me wrong – I’d re-nationalise the lot, AND the banks – so a Left government could implement a radical comprehensive state-planning led economic recovery plan. But we can’t do that inside the neoliberal enforcement machine of the EU. And we can’t win an election now anyway , having reversed our 2017 Manifesto promise to respect the Referendum outcome, and treated with contempt our Leave-voting Labour heartland working class voters with our dishonest, slippery, only very lightly disguised with diversionary verbiage , in reality unconditional pro Remain and second Referendum policy position.
Fantastic as it should be! Geeezas! This is going to kick off a shit Tzunami as from tomorrows MSM! The Establishment are starting to look like Squirming Catfish in a Savannah Mud Puddle!
It’s going to take more than free broadband to retrieve Labour’s position!
JackT…….Okay jack what do you want free beer 🍺?
… or less than? I wonder about the waning effect of a strategy of serial ‘freebie’ announcements as opposed to a strong focus on a few key ones hammered home in a coherent framework.
RH.. The copy machine will be running out of cartridges at Tory and libdem HQ…..actually do the lib dems have an HQ or is it that new bus theyve got ?
This will be amazingly good.
The profiteerrs who destroy our telecoms will sit-up and respect their customers, realissing that the very second that a people-oriented state starts and offers new services in competition (like aa non-twittering, non-facebooking social medium) their exploitative grip on us is loosend.
Moreover, Corbyn’s much-needed governent will also stop trans-national corporates from owning and monetising the data that our use of the internet currentlly gifts them.
The stopping of the trans-national corporations being as important as providing free broadband to all.
Not to mention our use of the “FREE GIFTS” that sit nicely on the Sideboard, Fridge, etc, etc, etc monitoring SOME of our Families’ every breath!
Perhaps we will also FINALLY get real Fibre Optic straight into the home via 1 single cable instead of 10 utility boxes at the front door!
Can we have Free Cable TV, for those who watch it, Socialist Network 1 to 10, Socialist History, Socialist Nature, etc :):):):) At a Premium BBC, Sky, Fox, Etc can be streamed with a 10 Minute Loving Kindness/Gratitude Meditation Session every 30 Minutes? :):):)
Stopping transnational corporations will be as important as providing free broadband.
… which is why working within Europe is essential if there’s to be any chance. A free-floating, diminished UK stand no chance.
The first post failed to appear until a posted the second one grrrr
Our use of the internet benefits the tech giants, the markets and the ISP’s more than it benefits us.
Once the infrastructure is laid down ongoing costs are negligible and what we pay for connection and data is pure profit.
Tech giants sell our data and bombard us with advertising and other companies want us to pay to be connected to that.
Want to sell my data and advertise shit to me? YOU pay my ISP for my broadband then, fucker.
Improved Broadband for Business as the High Street is devoid of shops. The one Big Question I would ask is who really owns your computer? Strange that you receive mass updates but you have no idea what they are & cannot stop them & then you must pay the computer mafia companies for ‘protection’.
I have Windows 7 & from January I am informed that my computer is even more vulnerable & I should buy a new one. Capitalism on steroids, but not exactly ‘Green’, but that would not make good MSM copy as Windows 7 is used by the elderly.
Steve – “cannot stop them [computer updates]”
You can (and I have) – although whether it’s a good idea is open to debate.
It’s only the W7 operating system that Microsoft is terminating support for and your computer might run the crap W10 well enough.
You can check if it will and you might still be able to “upgrade” (pfft) for free but I haven’t looked in a while.
W10 was designed for newer swiping touch screens but it can be made to look and operate a bit more like W7 if that helps. Mostly it’s that ugly Metro interface that’s useless without screen-swiping and makes everything look alike that I hate – and have hated it since it was called Windows Media Centre.
A lightweight Linux, possibly Zorin or Mint, might suit you – I dual boot them on old Windows machines that are too slow with resource-heavy W7. Depends on what kind of user you are.
Some of my older laptops I keep for nostalgia and for stone age diagnostics software that uses floppy discs and needs W2000 Pro or XP.
There are people still running Windows 98SE for the same reason, just not for general use.
Anything kept isolated from the internet – and from other connected machines – is generally safe to carry on using without updates if you’re careful.
An ADDED benefit of CorbynLabour’s proposal is that a world-class internet infrastructure makes the billionaire’s old-world MSM more peripheral, less central, less influential.
Universal access-rights delivered communally is also good for cohesion, good for people, good for democracy.
‘Interesting’ illustration of routine bias in the news headlines : Johnson’s response about the initiative being ‘crazy’ was placed *ahead* of the reporting of Corbyn’s actual announcement this lunchtime.