Currently, in Tower Hamlets, about 10% of all households have access to good quality broadband.
In a major announcement on Friday 15 November, the Labour Party 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 Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn made the announcement in Lancaster, describing the new free public service as central to Labour’s plans to transform our country and economy, “bringing communities together in an inclusive and connected society”.
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 rollout 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.
Only between 8-10 per cent of premises in the UK are connected to full-fibre broadband, compared to 97 per cent in Japan and 98 per cent in South Korea. Almost 80% of adults surveyed said that they have experienced internet reliability problems in the last year.
According to research by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, a full-fibre broadband network could boost productivity by £59 billion by 2025; bring half a million people back into the workforce; and boost rural economies, with an estimated 270,000 people more able to move to rural areas.
The party’s plans could result in 300 million fewer commuting trips, three billion fewer kilometres travelled by car, and 360,000 tonnes fewer carbon dioxide emissions.
The party also announced plans for a new Charter of Digital Rights – the strongest protection of data and online rights ever enacted. They will consult on its contents, which could include:
· Powers for individuals and collectives to challenge algorithmic injustice (where online algorithms cause disproportionate harms to particular groups);
· Powers for individuals and collectives to prevent the use of digital infrastructure for surveillance;
· Rights for individuals to protect access to and ownership of their data.
Details of the Proposal
· Labour will deliver free full-fibre broadband to all individuals and businesses by 2030. We will integrate the broadband-relevant parts of BT into a new public entity, British Broadband, with a mission to connect the country. Labour will aim to deliver free full-fibre broadband to at least 15-18 million premises within five years.
· This will be paid for through Labour’s Green Transformation Fund, with the costs of maintaining the network paid by a tax on multinationals (including tech giants like Google and Facebook).
· To deliver this we will adopt a public mission to roll-out the remaining 90-92% of full-fibre across the country, as well as acquiring the necessary access rights to the existing 8-10% of full-fibre assets
· The government will own the network that is rolled out and will deliver free full-fibre broadband as the network is completed, starting with communities with the worst broadband access (including rural and remote communities and some inner-city areas), followed by towns and smaller centres, followed by areas that are currently well-served by superfast or ultrafast broadband
· Coordinating this country-wide project will be a new entity, British Broadband, with two arms: British Digital Infrastructure (BDI), which will roll-out the public network, and the British Broadband Service (BBS), which will deliver free broadband
· This will be formed by bringing broadband-relevant parts of BT into public ownership: Openreach (which runs much of the existing digital network), parts of BT Technology (which oversees the backhaul network), BT Enterprise (which retails broadband to business) and BT Consumer (which retails broadband to individuals). EE, Plusnet, BT Global Services, BT TV and non-broadband-relevant parts of BT will not be brought into public ownership
· All current workers in broadband infrastructure and broadband retail services will be guaranteed jobs in the new public entity and be guaranteed the same or better terms and conditions;
· Public ownership of the broadband network will help tackle the regional inequality in coverage caused by competition that has led to under-build in rural and remote communities, and over-build in profitable areas.
· This will provide an extraordinary platform for businesses, who will face lower input costs; in particular, 5G technology (including on mobile phones) will be supported, since full-fibre and 5G are complementary technologies.
Costings
· There is a one-off capital cost to roll-out the full-fibre network of £15.3 billion (in addition to the Government’s existing and not-yet-spent £5 billion commitment), which will be paid for from our Green Transformation Fund;
· The cost of bringing parts of BT into public ownership be set by Parliament and paid for by swapping bonds for shares, as occurs with other public ownership processes;
· Full fibre has low maintenance costs once rolled out, which can be estimated at around £230 million a year, which will be more than covered by a system unitary taxation of multinationals, which involves treating multinational companies as single entities, and taxing UK-based multinationals on the share of their global profits that reflects their UK share of their global sales, employment and assets.
Recent Comments