From Breakingviews: UK Labour Party's broadband plan is free of most logic, says edwardcropley
Britain's opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn reacts during an election campaign event in Blackpool, Britain November 12, 2019.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s proposal drags Britain’s relatively poor levels of connectivity into the heart of the Dec. 12 election. BT’s fibre network currently reaches just 1.6 million homes, 9% of the total and way behind Spain and France. The company could crank up investment, but needs to provide a return to shareholders. Nationalising BT’s Openreach network would allow the state to complete the task.
But Labour is taking the idea further by promising to provide fibre broadband to the entire population free of charge. That cranks up the costs. Labour estimates the cost of running the fibre network at just 230 million pounds a year. Fibre is cheaper to maintain than old copper networks but that’s still hard to square with Openreach’s annual operating expenses of about 2.6 billion pounds.
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