Labour unveil plans for publically owned 'British Broadband'

Under the election pledge, it has said it will create a new public entity – British Broadband – through bringing the ‘broadband-relevant parts of BT’ into public ownership.

That would include Openreach, parts of BT Technology, BT Enterprise and BT Consumer. It has said that EE, Plusnet, BT Global Services, BT TV and non-broadband-relevant parts of BT would not be included in these plans.

Labour has said this will provide an ‘extraordinary platform’ for businesses, who will face lower input costs.

The plan would be paid for through Labour’s Green Transformation fund and taxing multinational corporations such as Amazon, Facebook and Google. The party says this would save the average person £30.30 a month.

Labour has said almost 80 per cent of adults surveyed said that they have experienced internet reliability problems in the last year. It relates this finding to only 8-10 per cent of premises in the UK being connected to full-fibre broadband, compared to 97 per cent in Japan and 98 per cent in South Korea.