LONDON, Nov 14 — Britain’s opposition Labour Party said it will nationalise telecoms provider BT’s fixed line network to provide free full-fibre broadband for all if it wins the December 12 election.
The news, the latest proposal by Labour for nationalisation of infrastructure, sent BT shares down as much as 3.7 per cent, wiping nearly half a billion pounds off its market capitalisation.
The plan would require a sweeping upgrade of Britain’s internet infrastructure that would be paid for by raising taxes on tech firms such as Alphabet’s Google, Amazon and Facebook and using its Green Transformation fund, Labour said.
Labour said it would nationalise Openreach — the digital network arm of the country’s biggest broadband and mobile phone provider — as well as parts of BT Technology, BT Enterprise and BT Consumer.
“It’s time to make the very fastest full-fibre broadband free to everybody, in every home in every corner of the country,” Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will say in a speech, according to an extract released by the party.
“By creating British Broadband as a public service, we will lead the world in using public investment to transform our country, reduce people’s monthly bills, boost our economy and improve people’s quality of life.”
BT, which traces its history back to an 1846 telegraph company, was once one of Britain’s national champions but was privatised by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government in 1984.
Labour said the cost of nationalising parts of BT would be set by parliament and paid for by swapping bonds for shares.
“These are very, very ambitious ideas and the Conservative Party have their own ambitious idea for full fibre for everyone by 2025 and how we do it is not straight forward,” Chief Executive Philip Jansen told the BBC.
“It needs funding, it is very big numbers, so we are talking £30 (RM160 billion) to £40 billion... and if you are giving it away over an eight year time frame it is a another £30 or £40 billion. You are not short of £100 billion.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has promised to roll out full-fibre broadband to all homes by 2025 if his Conservatives, who are leading in the opinion polls, win the election.
‘Broadband for all’
Corbyn, a 70-year old socialist campaigner who stunned Britain’s political establishment when he won the Labour leadership in 2015, said he wanted to bring communities together in an inclusive and connected society.
He plans to nationalise the rail, utility and water companies as well as increase taxes on the financiers of the City of London and the wealthy.
He said the current communications network was patchy and slow. Currently, fewer than 10 per cent of British premises have access to full-fibre broadband — also called fibre to the premises, where fibre optic cable instead of copper is used to connect homes to the network.
Labour said it would roll out the free broadband to all individuals and businesses by 2030, providing it to at least 15 million to 18 million premises within five years. It said the plan would save the average person 30.30 pounds a month.
Under its plans, Labour said there would be a one-off capital cost of £15.3 billion to deliver the full-fibre network, on top of the five billion already promised by Johnson.
BT CEO Jansen said last month that Johnson’s timescale for delivering full-fibre broadband to all homes would be extremely difficult to achieve and said the company would need the government and the regulator to create conditions that would allow it to make a fair return. — Reuters
