Britain Proposed to Free the Internet

In an election where exit from Great Britain from the European Union, a debate on internet speeds will appear unlikely to enter the race.

But the Labour Party injected the topic last week with a surprise plan to provide high-speed internet service to every family and business in the country by 2030 and free.

The proposal raised questions about how a free, wide-generation service would function and who would pay.

Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said the government will take part of the country's largest internet provider, Openreach, a subsidiary of BT telecommunications giant. The plan will reverse decades of privatisation and put the government responsible for a major national infrastructure project.

Corbyn said the plan would cost about 20 billion pounds, or about $26 billion, and would be paid as part of a new government spending package.

A Facebook, Google tax and other technology giants would be used to maintain the network. He said he would save customers an average of about 30 pounds a month in Internet service, or about $39.

The idea is an attempt to create a new British social service, similar to the National Health Service, which offers free medical attention to British residents.

No other country offers free internet service from the government, says Matthew Howett, founder and leading analyst at the National Research Centre, a firm studying telecommunications.

To catch up with other countries, Britain would negotiate the acquisition of Openreach, which has more than 32,000 employees and revenues of more than $5 billion, or about $6.5 billion.

The government will take over construction of a project that the telecommunications industry says will cost approximately $35 billion, or about $45 billion, making it one of the biggest infrastructure efforts in the country.

The prospects of several other companies competing with Openreach and have promised billions in investments for their initiatives will be cast into doubt following the debut of a free government-run service.

All consumers would leave. There is no way consumers will pay the internet if they can get it free from the government,” said Howett.

The only comparable project is in Australia, where the National Broadband Network has been trying to connect the country to the internet with fibers over the past decade. This project has been criticised for delays, the outcome of the budget and not offering the quality of the promised service.

Governments in other countries have taken different approaches. In South Korea and Japan, where more than 95 percent of households and businesses have a wide belt of fiber - fiber internet, the government played a crucial role, including helping companies obtain loans to pay costs.

In Latvia and Portugal, other countries with high internet coverage, government grants have helped businesses pay for construction. In the US, a fee for mobile phone bills is used to pay subsidies for businesses to expand the generation in rural areas, although it does not require that fiber networks be built.

The fast Internet key is clearly a problem when the future of the global economy will depend much more on the connection,” said Kevin Allison, who studies government technology policy with the Eurasian Group in Berlin.