UK ISPs Could Face Government Broadband TV Tax

An anonymous reader writes "Industry regulator Ofcom, which yesterday launched the first phase of its review into public service broadcasting, is threatening to impose a tax on UK broadband ISPs to help resolve funding problems. The review covers all public service broadcasters, both publicly owned and commercial. Ofcom Chief Executive Ed Richards said: 'Public service broadcasting is at a crossroads. Viewers still want a mix of high quality UK-made content, but the traditional television model is not enough to meet all their needs. Today's proposals outline options for a securely-funded PSB future. Now is the time for a wide-ranging debate looking carefully and dispassionately at all the options.'"

Comments

Totally ridiculous

[gilesjuk]

Broadband is too cheap, it's obvious that when you reduce ADSL to a low price comparable to dialup that the price becomes unsustainable if people are using lots of bandwidth.

BBC iPlayer uses bandwidth that customers pay for, they have a set limit which they are allowed and if they exceed it then they have to pay for more bandwidth.

So why should a tax be imposed on all customers? Ofcom is stupid and a waste of time, they're ruining the UK TV market by allowing more frequent adverts and now this.

Taxes

[evanbd]

Why is this a tax on Internet access, rather than being drawn from the general fund? Net access is something that is good for people to have, so putting a tax on it is a bad thing, especially since it's a regressive tax (people with lower income will spend proportionally more of their income on net access, so proportionally more of their income goes to the tax).

Taxes on specific things, rather than broad taxes that go to the general fund, should be for one of two reasons. Either the tax should be intended to discourage something (whether that's an ethical reason I'll leave to others, but if society making such judgements is reasonable then the tax is reasonable), or the tax should be intended to internalize an internal cost. So taxes on carbon emissions and other polluting activities make sense (though imho tradable permits are better), because there is a normally external cost paid by society that should be shifted to the ones creating the problem. Internet access is neither of those things -- and public content is most certainly not an external cost.

Re:Right...

[Anonymous Coward]

the courporate bbc seeks more funds for their propaganda brainwashing of the British populous because ppl realise the TV broadcasts are complete crap and better content can be found via the interweb.

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/04/396197.html

http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/nbbw.cgi

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/04/396229.html

Pre-emptive strike

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that UK ISPs have been claiming that the BBC should pay for the ISPs' users accessing BBC media online, does anyone else think this is just a ploy to get the ISPs on the back foot? Maybe the BBC hopes that the ISPs would be willing to settle for some kind of arrangement along the lines of "ISPs don't get taxed to fund the BBC so long as they don't throttle BBC services for their users".

I really don't know where I stand on this. On one hand, the ISPs have been massively overselling their capacity, and without access to "free" media a broadband connection is not of great interest to their customers, so my sympathy for them is limited.

On the other hand, the ISPs are in a difficult market right now (even if it is largely their own doing), and I'm not sure that squeezing them further is in the best interest of future internet in the UK. I'm also not convinced that taxes used to fund the BBC are used all that fairly. I'm generally in favour of government funding of the BBC, it means it's less controlled by commercial interests, but the current state of play is pretty unfair on the other media providers in the UK right now.

Re:Right...

[pavon]

Yeah, this is stupid. At least with the TV License, people only had to pay if they owned a tuner, whose main purpose was to watch the broadcast content, the vast majority of which was BBC produced. There were exceptions like folks that had a TV with tuner but only used it as a DVD monitor, but it at least attempted to be targeted at people using the service. This is just ridiculous - there are so many applications of broadband that BBC content is a tiny minority. If they are concerned about their revenue stream drying up as media moves online, they should just limit their online content to folks that paid the TV license rather than allowing all UK IP addresses like they do now.

Re:Right...

[radio4fan]

Fear not. It'll never happen.

One of the largest ISPs in Britain is Sky, owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Murdoch is pretty much the most powerful man in Britain. The government daren't piss off Murdoch.

And Murdoch's News International pays virtually no tax in the UK, and I doubt he's about to start.

Ofcom can say what they like, but HMG aren't going to be setting aside time to pass legislation which will hit Murdoch in the pocket.

Maddness!

[SplatMan_DK]

Sadly, this madness is already in effect in Denmark. I launched a website with a petition to stop this ludicrous practice in Denmark about 1½ year ago (note: site is in Danish!)

We have collected more than 41.000 "signatures" in opposition of applying TV license fees to the internet and/or devices which have absolutely nothing to do with television.

I have written a quick background summary in English on my website. The rest of the site is in Danish ... sorry :-)

So unfortunately, the British are not the first to go down this sad path.

- Jesper

Re:everyone pays

[DigitAl56K]

The BBC may have political bias, but until you have lived in the US and witness the likes of Fox news you really have no idea how good you have it. Their individual party biases aside, the media here, across half-a-dozen "news" networks, appears to be fully coerced in their coverage (or lack there-of) of major political and world events.

You get to choose with your remote and your wallet That may be true, but it is the wrong way to understand the effect of public broadcast. Where there is competent and broadly targeted public broadcasting a bar is set for the quality of programming of for-profit networks. Without the BBC, for example, I think you would see a very different and quickly degrading television landscape. In fact I know you would, because that's exactly what I see here where there is public broadcast, but unless you're into jazz music, movies from the seventies, or watching senators debating on CSPAN, you would never watch it anyway, and so it doesn't really have much influence on the other networks.

The comedy of the situation

[DigitAl56K]

* Most nations look up to the quality of the BBC, even though it's hotly debated inside the UK
* People are complaining that they are more busy these days than ever
* We complaining that our education system is failing us and our children are growing up to be louts
* We keep hearing stories of kids being parented to greater and greater extents by TV
* We want to see the top public broadcasters cutting costs and funding to put a few more pennies back into our pockets

Good move everybody, good move.

Re:everyone pays

[Chuck Chunder]

They are extremely one-sided politically.

I think that is grossly oversimplified.

If anything I think the BBC (and the Australian ABC) are generally over-critical of whatever government currently in power.

However I do not see that as a bad thing. In a sense this is a way of them demonstrating their independence. It is far more dangerous for a national broadcaster to be too soft on those in power than too hard.