TECH NEWS – The political campaign is already going in the United Kingdom, as they will elect a new government once again in December.

The Labour party has promised that if they get into power, the big tech companies are going to get taxed. The money would be used to make British Telecom (shortened to BT from this point on), or at least its broadband arm, Openreach, partially nationalized so that BT could provide free fibre Internet access to each household in the United Kingdom. BT’s head says the cost would be a hundred billion pounds sterling, which is five times more than Labour’s estimate of twenty billion…

Labour’s big-tech tax would hit Amazon, Google, and Facebook, and something similar was already brought up by the French and the Italian governments. However, there’s no word on HOW the money would be collected – only the amount of money is brought up, which feels a little like thinking far too ahead without having a concrete plan in hand… and we have also yet to see how other broadband providers, such as Sky (bought by American Comcast), or Virgin, would be affected, as they earn money by providing Internet as well. Openreach’s free Internet would undermine the competition. Labour’s election promise hit BT’s stock value, too.

At the moment, Labour’s idea feels nothing more than a farfetched idea, as fibre isn’t widely installed even in our country, Hungary either, and we’re one of the fastest average speed countries when it comes to Internet speeds. And the UK doesn’t have an ISP like one of the Central European providers that offered a free upgrade from their FTTB system to an FTTH one in apartment blocks, albeit pushing the devices’ electric costs to the customers. The United Kingdom is a much bigger country, and the estimated cost mentioned two paragraphs above could be even more.

Without taking a political stand, we can say that it is a hard promise to fulfil…

Source: WCCFTech

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