Well they can foxtrot oscar with that!
I think nationalising Openreach is a good idea - if only for the stated purposes of hooking up the country to fibre (to the property). There would still be room for service level competition in terms of speed and value added packages. If Openreach is state-owned, at least there will be some impetus to deliver FTTP. I mean, for a lot of properties (like mine / my housing estate), it’s really just the work to cable from the cabinets to the master socket. A bit of temporary and one-off disruption for road works and you’re done for generations. All new build estates and city block properties are getting FTTP by default now.
Leaving this to the market will not work - look at the state of cable connections in the UK. A massive push for laying in the 90s followed by virtually nothing. Virgin has not substantially expanded its network in the last 20 years. There needs to be a centralised push.
So, this is a policy I could get behind. It is a good investment for the country, for the reasons McDonnell stated.
Aceris
7031
Why do we need residential FTTP?
Because FTTC is often rubbish? And anyway maxes out at much lower speeds.
Banjax
7033
and they’d prefer to be right that in power and actually be able to make a change anybody’s life for the better.
It’s Corbyn’s career writ large…‘I’m right and it’s not fair’
Aceris
7034
My experience is that it has been good, and the speeds more than adequate for any realistic current home user needs. I used to hear constant complaining about broadband in the ADSL days, now everyone in my socmedia bubble seems pretty happy.
Obviously there are cases where the cabinet is too far away, or there isn’t enough capacity, but it seems more reasonable to invest in fixing this, or even use a 5G or other radio-based system in these areas rather than giving every home a gigabit connection they will never use a hundreth of.
Banjax
7035
For the same reason that we didn’t only need 640k.
As somebody with a 1gig fibre connection in my flat, it allows a different internet experience and gives a great experience.
Having a national fibre infrastructure like the other utilities, makes sense. Running Openreach to maximise the communication capabilities, net neutrality and customer amenity for the whole of the UK makes sense.
What doesn’t make sense:
- Forcing shareholders to a take a discount will steal money from people who are shareholders because their pension scheme has invested. Not every shareholder is big business.
- Having the government involved in the running of it directly makes no sense particularly when the unions would see it as a blank cheque.
- Only doing fixed internet access makes no sense when more and more access is done from mobile devices.
We should:
-
Buy Openreach at a market rate.
-
Run it at arm’s length by appointing a board which focuses on delivering to a mission statement of customer amenity and worker fairness both in the short and long term (in a similar manner to the Bank of England).
-
Provide a core level of service free (2mbps?) but charge for additional speed. Use the income to be self-sufficient and invest the profits in adding to the capabilities of the network.
-
Ensure that the law excludes the government having any role in censorship of the network.
Aceris
7037
How is it qualitatively different? What additional utility is provided by a 1 gbps connection compared to a 40 mbps one? Does that justify the (immense) expense of getting fibre into homes that were built with copper infrastructure?
There’s a reason we generally prefer to let the market make these kind of decisions (although the natural monopoly of the backbone provider argument is well-founded).
I appreciate your constructive suggestion for how a state-owned backbone provider might operate - I agree that that would be a much more sensible strucure, although am sceptical that the arms-length board arrangement would have the desired effect.
Have you got a family, or more than one internet user in your home? Even the current “standard” for super fast internet - around 20mbps - does not go far for one person, let alone a whole family. What about in 10 years when 4k is even more prevalent? Added to that is the severe variability in quality of connection via the remaining legacy copper.
“The market” will not invest the admittedly colossal sums required upfront to push this forward - the stall of cable development proved that, and Openreach simply does not have the resources or will to do this by itself.
There will be plenty of scope for the market and competition on top of govt controlled comms infrastructure.
spiffy
7039
ugh. I’ve completely stopped thinking of BBC news as objective, non biased. they do seem to be very coddly to the Tories, and enjoy gently subverting Labour / other poltiical vantage points.
Aceris
7040
Which is irrelevant to my point that the investment in the infrastructure might be misplaced.
You don’t help your cause by lying. 24 Mbps is the floor for internet to be described as superfast, and most superfast connections are considerably faster than that. The average UK connection is faster than 20 Mbps, even from the most pessimistic methodology.
“Streaming 4k video, espcially multiple streams” is a totally legitimate response, but is that worth £20bn of taxpayers money? That’s the question.
Aceris
7041
Oh dear, another recruit to the Corbynite “the media are out to get us” Trump style campaigning.
spiffy
7042
Nope, I’m not a Corbyn fan by any means. I’ve just noticed a subtle ideological bias in subverting imagery, suspectly worded titles, coddled coverage etc that does not present things as I should expect.
My choice for tweet of the day:
I thought like talked about above, this was nationalising Openreach.
Doing that doesnt deliver free FTTP to every household in the UK.
Fairly sure digging all those holes and laying all that line and rendering an entire industry sector unemployed and is more than £20bn though. When they put all these ISPs out of business what happens? Compensation? or is it “Just die you fucking capitalist parasite” to everyone who works in an ISP or owns shares of one?
I think BBC’s current affairs division is highly suspicious and no ones ever gonna call me a Corbynista heh
Most of my suspicions were based around Brexit coverage but this GEs coverage has been a bit WTF even for me
Oh, did I link this before? Corbyn might talk about making Facebook pay tax but they’ve also talked about nationalising Facebook. At least here they talk about creating a Facebook where the Labour Party can control what topics are talked about and what news they want to see trending.
Usually its “seize Amazon UK because destroy the capitalists” that the rank and file threaten every time they see a story about tax structures in a multinat.
Whilst all this is going on Johnson is having a fucking awful campaign. No wonder his minders do everything they can to keep him away from cameras, journalists and questions on TV.
Property is theft comrade.
An American invasive species that needs to be excised from mainland British politics.
Ironically, the best chance of achieving this is… the EU. It’s the EU that is spearheading the fight in the OECD against the tax evasion of the tech giants (and the US fighting against). The idea that the UK could force through a tax like this on its own… heh, good luck with that.
But exactly as predicted, this has become an election about everything other than Brexit. As it obviously had to, when there are so many conflicting interests in play.
draxen
7048
Sure, sure… this election is about everything other than Brexit eyeroll
https://whatukthinks.org/eu/a-brexit-election-2/
“Around four in five (78%) of those who supported Leave are currently proposing to vote for either the Conservatives or the Brexit Party. In contrast, around four in five (81%) of those who backed Remain say they support one of the parties in favour of another referendum. It looks as though the divide of three years ago will in many respects be played out again on December 12. Only a minority of voters – just one in five – are likely to opt for parties whose views on Brexit are seemingly at odds with how they voted three years ago.”
