Home
 » ISP News » 
Sponsored Links

UPDATE Green Party Manifesto – Oblige BT to Fix Rural Broadband Woes

Tuesday, Apr 14th, 2015 (7:42 am) - Score 1,143

The Labour and Liberal Democrat parties have already given us a glimpse of their respective approaches towards improving national broadband connectivity across the United Kingdom (here) and today it’s the turn of the Green Party, which sees BT as the key to fixing the country’s broadband slowspots and notspots.

As stated in the prior article, ISPreview.co.uk remains a broadly political neutral website and over the past 16 years we’ve been just as happy to praise, as well as criticise, the failings of both past and present Government’s with equal measure. In that sense we tend to judge political policies by how detailed, practical and economically viable they are, but we’ll avoid saying X is better than Z (that’s for you to judge).

So far Labour and the Libdems have broadly proposed policies that appear to support what the Government’s current Broadband Delivery UK programme is already doing and in both cases there has been a lack of detail. In that sense readers won’t be surprised to find that the Greens are being almost equally vague, although they do appear to be hinting at a potentially different approach.

Madeleine EllisPetersen, Green Party, told ISPreview.co.uk:

The Green Party would oblige BT and other Public Telecommunications Operators to provide affordable high-speed broadband-capable infrastructure to every household and small business.”

As before the problem here is with a crucial lack of detail, not least with regards to how the Green’s would define “high-speed broadband” (e.g. 2Mbps, 5Mbps, 10Mbps, 1000Mbps?) because that can have a huge impact on the costs and viability of such an approach.

Equally the use of the word “oblige” could reference anything from applying Utility Status to such operators or enhancing the Universal Service Obligation (USO) in order to mandate the deployment and support of faster fixed line broadband connectivity. In that sense the current Government have already pledged to look at a 5Mbps USO (here).

Finally, the inclusion of “otherPublic Telecommunications Operators (PTOs) is interesting because at present only KC in Hull and BT (across the rest of the UK) form part of the fixed line USO. As such we’d like to know whether the Green’s would expand this to include other operators, such as Virgin Media, or possible even smaller providers.

Such a move, if it ever happened, would be difficult since most of the other operators have limited coverage and not all PTOs control the underlying infrastructure. Forcing some of these into a USO might negatively impact their current investment and roll-out plans or it could result in consumers paying a higher price for their service. But there’s always room for a balanced and common sense approach.

As usual we put some of our clarification points to the Greens and have yet to receive a reply. The Party’s full Manifesto is due to be published later this morning, but we suspect that it won’t add much to what has already been said above.

UPDATE 10:24am

The full Green Party Manifesto has now been released, although take note that it’s an 11MB PDF file and seems to be in an unsearchable image format. Never the less we note that their manifesto mirrors the quote given to us above and doesn’t add any additional details, at least not in terms of broadband connectivity.

Tags: ,
Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and .
Search ISP News
Search ISP Listings
Search ISP Reviews

Comments are closed

Cheap BIG ISPs for 100Mbps+
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £24.00
132Mbps
Gift: None
Shell Energy UK ISP Logo
Shell Energy £26.99
109Mbps
Gift: None
Plusnet UK ISP Logo
Plusnet £27.99
145Mbps
Gift: None
Zen Internet UK ISP Logo
Zen Internet £28.00 - 35.00
100Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
Cheapest ISPs for 100Mbps+
Gigaclear UK ISP Logo
Gigaclear £15.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
YouFibre UK ISP Logo
YouFibre £19.99
150Mbps
Gift: None
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
BeFibre UK ISP Logo
BeFibre £21.00
150Mbps
Gift: £25 Love2Shop Card
Hey! Broadband UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
The Top 15 Category Tags
  1. FTTP (5470)
  2. BT (3505)
  3. Politics (2524)
  4. Openreach (2290)
  5. Business (2251)
  6. Building Digital UK (2234)
  7. FTTC (2041)
  8. Mobile Broadband (1961)
  9. Statistics (1778)
  10. 4G (1654)
  11. Virgin Media (1608)
  12. Ofcom Regulation (1451)
  13. Fibre Optic (1392)
  14. Wireless Internet (1386)
  15. FTTH (1381)
Promotion
Sponsored

Copyright © 1999 to Present - ISPreview.co.uk - All Rights Reserved - Terms , Privacy and Cookie Policy , Links , Website Rules , Contact
Mastodon