Broadband Communism?

I see that the Labour party are promising to give the entire country "free" broadband as part of their manifesto for the upcoming general election. Now, don't get me wrong I'm in favor of state involvement in the roll out of essential infrastructure like broadband but "free", really? Would this be feasible and what would it actually mean in terms of a "project".

A couple of key points for me would be firstly the numbers and secondly the quality.

Labour say that they can roll out high speed fiber to everyone for £20 Billion, now, there's no point in having fiber unless all the up-stream equipment and routing is of sufficient quality ($$) to support it, that costs tons and none of it is made in the UK (in case our currency tanks after Brexit etc.). Then there's the existing companies providing these services that employ thousands of people, presumably the plan would be for the state to somehow hire some of these people (via a nationalized BT) and to continue to do so indefinitely in order to support the network. By my reckoning that's probably a lot more than £20 Billion, I agree with the estimates suggested by BT themselves of perhaps more like £75-100 Billion. Then there are the people who work in the private sector for companies such as Virgin, Sky and Talk-talk etc. presumably these companies would cease investment and eventually those people would be made redundant, not exactly a great Christmas for them then.

The second big point would be about quality. Broadband is expensive and complex to roll out on this scale, based on past performance, I can't believe that any Government would be particularly good at a) managing a project of this scale (Elizabeth line, HS2, NHS IT projects anyone?), b) keeping costs down and quality high and c) procuring the "right" technology (networking is a very fast moving field). If any of these things fail then it's easy to imagine the quality of the "free" service plummeting and we all know what it's like to have unreliable broadband, i.e. you might as well not have it at all, especially if you're relying on it to do your job etc. The risk is that we'll end up with a "British Rail" internet, not much help to businesses or people, in fact a positive hindrance.

This is a difficult one to call, it's certainly ambitious but it's also bloody risky, it'll be interesting to see how it pans out should Labor get in (unlikely IMO)..