Unsurprisingly, Darren Farnden, the company’s Head of Marketing, does not rate the proposals of any of the three major players very highly. Labour’s manifesto, he points out, “doesn’t really contain anything new. Their promises are vague and have all been heard before.” He also repeats Entanet’s criticism of the planned 50p broadband tax. “If we were discussing winning an award for ‘Most Vague Manifesto’ then my money would be on Labour to win”, he adds.
Farnden is equally scathing about Conservative plans to scrap the 50p tax and instead coerce BT and other network providers to expand coverage and deliver ‘superfast’ broadband. He highlights glaring contradictions in their promises and says: “They say they will put a freeze on major new ICT spending. Doesn’t this contradict the commitment to making Britain a digital leader?
He criticises the Liberal Democrats for putting forward only brief proposals in its manifesto but concurs with some of the thinking behind proposals from the Pirate Party UK, which focuses purely on copyright and patent law, privacy law, and freedom of speech. “We actually find ourselves agreeing with them (in principle) on several of their suggestions” Farnden states, whilst also pointing out that Entanet feels that the Party’s stance on reduction to copyright timescales is too extreme and that its plan to get users to pay only for the broadband speeds they get would be unworkable.
To read the full article visit http://opinion.enta.net/2010/04/19/election-2010-%E2%80%93-drawing-the-broadband-battle-lines/.