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UK Government Announces Broadband Tax
Barence writes "The UK Government is planning a 50p-per-month levy on fixed-line connections to pay for next-generation broadband. The Government claims that market forces alone will bring fiber connections to only two thirds of the country, so it plans to use the 'broadband tax' to pay for the final third by 2017. The plans form part of the Government's Digital Britain report, which also see the UK guarantee connections of 2Mbits/sec for every citizen by 2012." The report also threatens legal action and bandwidth restriction for repeat file sharers.
BT still owns the all the backbone connectivity and makes obscene profits on it. Taxing users in order to make more connections to that backbone monopoly is totally wrong.
1000s Warcraft Gold while you sleep
At 2Mb/s, I'd say the entire country gets punished right from the start. This sort of speed is okay, but it's hardly the future.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
A total waste of time, and how can we trust these idiots to actually spend the money on what they're levying the tax for? Heh, they'll be insisting we all install Green Dam Youth Escort next!!
Instead of the gov' taxing people and placing down public broadband lines companies can compete over... They're literally handing a giant check to the existing two big broadband network suppliers (cable and DSL) and asking them to put down the lines. So in the long term they're just giving the broadband networks a larger subscriber base without any real public benefit.
There is nothing wrong with the tax but what they're using it for is flawed. It will lead to monopolies in most areas, or at best two options to pick from that both charge similar rates and provide similar services.
Problem is BT estimates that it will cost upwards of £5Bn to do FttC.At 50p a month even if every household paid this. It would still take 37.9 years to raise that amount. Its totally pointless, further more the problem in the UK is that all the politicans and BPI seem to have gotten it in their heads that all file-sharing is illegal regardless of whether it is family videos or the latest cinema release.
....a tax, how imaginative.
I'm sure I recall something about US phone companies being given vast quantities of money - officially to lay on broadband, but there were no sanctions written in to say "failure to lay on broadband will result in the money being repayable" or similar.
Quite what happened with the money I don't know but it wasn't spent on broadband.
This actually *is* a good thing - if the money inmediately is used for the intended purpose: Bringing nation-wide Broadband fast. Which would mean that the runtime of this tax is limited to a few years, when every corner of the countryside has broadband.
This is actually quite different from the German GEZ fee for Internet capable devices. Which is bizar beyond anything concievable.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
"One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary."
-- Ayn Rand
>The Government says it will make it "easier and cheaper" for rights holders to take civil action against file sharers.
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>What's more, it will "place an obligation on ISPs to maintain records of the most frequent offenders, which would allow rights holders to take targeted legal action against these >infringers."
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>Finally, ISPs will be roped in to protect copyright material, restricting bandwidth to known filesharers, and even blocking access to certain protocols entirely.
ONLY approved protocols available - that's dictatorship, not government. Thank fuck that we'll be rid of the ruling party for a very long time (possibly for ever) after next June
When in the end you're just going to limit everyones access to the internet anyway via the IWF and other spy schemes..
I'm sure goverments spend alot of time thinking of new ways to tax people, hell they'd tax breathing air and having sex if they could. I've never seen a tax that is rescinded, tax revenue to goverments is like heroin to a junkie.
The UK government already made these empty threats about "3 strikes" before and never followed through with it.
Add to this EU measures against such disconnection and the failure of such measures in other nations for human rights reasons, and I don't see this as a credible threat, just a bunch of babbling on.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Other major points in the report (from this BBC article):
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
Surely the problem here isn't that the UK government is trying to raise taxes to pay for something that has a massive social benefit, but that it's doing it via a poll tax? I pay as much towards this project as my millionaire friend and my grandmother who's on a small pension. Is it really that unfashionable to tax the rich?
So let me get this right, they want everyone to have high speed internet, but they won't allow them to use it for its primary purpose?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
... and totally ignores
- your-cellphone-is-your-internet-access-device in the future, if not today.
- unwired / 3G broadband via dongles is one of the biggest growth areas in broadband takeup (albeit subject to 3G coverage).
- that plenty of people don't want internet / broadband services. And so won't use it.
- for people who can't afford current broadband rates (from £10/$15 pm)... they are likely to have other more pressing problems, and probably have access to a community internet service (public library) or internet cafe.
- the cost for providing wired broadband to remote communities - and there are still lots of those in the UK - is going to be pretty expensive...
So it does seem to be an infrastructure tax. Unlike certain US taxes, note though this does not have an expiry date attached.
And they charge based on bits transferred, not bits able to be transferred. Meaning that the most economical way of selling broadband is to oversubscribe and blame other users on the slow connection.
Was that because BT was privatised???
NO.
A quick glance at http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/3994-the-digital-britain-report-is-finally-out.html will show what some think of this and http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ gives a wider view of ISP related moans with links to other ISPs information.
According to the article, the government is going to be getting the ISPs to do their dirty work for them, whatever we have as an RIAA/MPAA equivalent, and the police:
Sounds like they're making the ISPs track down the sharers so that the rights holders can just cherry-pick from a list. Sounds like a bad situation for the ISPs to get in to with things like "common carrier" statuses.
Again, looks like the ISPs aren't just going to be "carriers" any more. Could be quite a bad precedent (for the ISPs, at least). Also, what's the betting that a) the protocol blocks will be a blanket ban on BitTorrent, meaning that legitimate downloads (like Linux ISOs) will also be affected and b) they'll do it in such a way that's easily circumventable?
"A third possibility might be that the last mile infrastructure is communally owned"
... then come back again and again taking ever more money every few years. Each time taking millions more to pay for incremental upgrades.
... while "Ian Livingston, the chief executive, stands to make more than £6 million in bonuses this year if performance targets are met. This is on top of his basic salary of £850,000." ... Its a corrupt arragant UK government giving millions more to an arragant corrupt boss treating his staff with contempt.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/telecoms/article5890128.ece
A fourth possibility is they pay for it out of the cost to the people who need better connections outside of the major cities.
Getting others to pay for it is nuts. Also where does this thinking end? Can the government simply choose ever more ways to tax people to give to yet more companies to partially fund what the company should be earning from the sale of its products.
Also they are selling a rubbish product. 2Mbits is obsolite now. So do they then come back in a few years time, to take even more money to pay to upgrade it to say 8Mbits
What is it with the current UK government. Their greedy corrupt control freak attitude seems to have no end. I love how they spin it as (implied *just*) 50p-per-month levy. That sounds so much better than £6 (about $10) extra tax per year. The UK Government gives hundreds of billions to their rich banker friends and then their friends in telecoms also want some free extra money, so the Government decides to take some more money from people. Haven't they given enough already this year?!?. £6 may not be much when you have a job, but its a lot for the elderly on a pension. Also if someone walked up to you in the street and just tried to take that amount of money off you, everyone would complain about it, yet this government can just decide to take it wherever they wish.
Its not as if BT are short of money... "BT to freeze pay of 100,000 employees"
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
Oh yeah: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Service_Fund
The goals of Universal Service are:
To promote the availability of quality services at just, reasonable, and affordable rates,
To increase access to advanced telecommunications services throughout the Nation,
To advance the availability of such services to all consumers, including those in low income, rural, insular, and high cost areas at rates that are reasonably comparable to those charged in urban areas.
We saw where that went.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
"how can we trust these idiots to actually spend the money on what they're levying the tax for?"
You can't and they won't. Just like road tax goes into the general pot so will this. Its just another way for our failed government to raise taxes.
HAHAAHHAHA 2Mbits/sec. May be my country is corrupted but I get 30Mbits/s for 17$.
Government: ISPs, collect 50p per subscriber.
All ISPs: No.
Government: We'll fine you all and shut you all down!
All ISPs: So you're taking Britain off the Internet? Good luck with that.
Any ISP which gives in to the tax deserves it. Any customer which stays with an ISP which gives in to the tax deserves it.
Iran's got the right idea: when you don't like your government and an election doesn't work (or a leader assumes unpopular power without calling one, hello Brown), take to the streets. When veterans at Normandy respectfully greet those who formally shot at them but heckle their own leader, you know it's time for change. Yes, it's all rabble-rousing by the US to get a cruel American puppet from the '80s back in power (daft students don't remember him, I guess), but it works, doesn't it? :-)
This ISP mess is one symptom of a very big problem. As always, you get the government you deserve.
Why should the rich - or anyone else - pay for your home entertainment? And lets not kid ourselves that broadband is a vital public utility up there with water and electricty , it isnt, despite what some vested interests may proclaim. Apart from a few home workers its mostly used for recreation. Why should we be taxed on that??
Since theres now going to be a tax for the underclass and people who are too tight to pay for broadband themselves shall we assume there'll also need to be a tax for these people to be given computers to use on said service?
Someone on £500pcm has much, MUCH less of it than someone on £2000pcm. And the one on £2000pcm
a) pays the same tax on the first £500 that the poorer person does, so isn't paying more tax
b) has enough money to pay for an accountant to reduce or avoid taxes
Just yeterday NPR had a bit about some kind of tax in Britain called "the license fee" that runs for about 200$ a year for every TV set owned by the Brits. And the money apparently goes to fund BBC. Once you pay 15$ a month to get Brit version of PBS, why not 50$ for all of the internet at full speed?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
In France you can get 3.6MB/s satellite internet for 40 euro per month. So why would you pull cables? Only hardcore gamers will be in trouble, ping times of 600 ms are typical. But then, keep the gamers in the city please :-)
The Carter Report is a fatally compromised blueprint for subversion that attempts to extend government control into a surprisingly vast array of areas.
1. Television. The existing licence fee is an outrage when the BBC via BBC Worldwide make heaps of money and yet refuse to make available their back catalogue for the benefit of the entire nation (well, they do but for a steep price). The report suggests we preserve the licence fee but siphon more off to commercial and quasi-commercial broadcasters?! Insane. Cut the licence fee in half, force the BBC to sell off some channels, let the broadcasters who can't afford to broadcast go out of business forthwith, open the iPlayer to ANY AND ALL who wish to broadcast through it (or just give it up to iTunes and Apple).
2. Broadband. Universal broadband is a terrific notion, but a telephone tax seems grossly unfair when there are MANY ways to extend high-ish speed internet access to the masses outside the M25. Why not refund the spectrum auction billions to wireless providers and compel them to build-out LTE so that it covers the entire nation? Is that any less insane than the current proposal?
3. Internet privacy. I well understand the government sucking up to Big Content, but surely we have learnt from Sarkosy's defeat in France that a three strikes law would be nearly impossible to enforce without some serious violations of one's privacy. But it's ok if ISP's snoop and not the government? Disgusting and typical of the Labour government that brought us nearly indefinite detention without charge, a national identity register and ID cards, etc.
They're taxing landlines, so simply drop your landline and avoid the tax.
This report seems to have a lot of similarities in some sections to the reports coming from other countries.
There are only two things sure in life : Death and Taxes
All Insightful, Interesting or Informative where the fuck are my funny comments?
I really do not like the way that most news outlets say that "file sharing" is illegal. It's not. Sharing *copyrighted* files is but in itself, the act of sharing isn't. The distinction is an an important one as producers of open source and even some musicians use sharing to their advantage, but it seems to be getting increasingly lost in the noise.
The danger is that the credibility of these new models will be eroded over time with the repetition of the general concept that sharing is wrong.
They can say what they want, but next year the Tories will win and scrap most of this plan.
The Tories are not in bed with telcos, credit-card manufacturers and "creative industries", they have different sponsors (oil companies, "old money", etc). The flow of pork will be redirected accordingly. This report is hardly worth the digital paper it is printed on.
-- Let's go Viridian.
the 1/3rd who will be getting broadband because of this tax should be the ones paying for it...
I thought one of the most interesting parts of the Digital Britain report was the commentary on copyright and related subjects, which took a reasonably realistic and balanced view IMHO, e.g.,
Of course, some of the measures and timescales they propose to support these things are rather unrealistic, but I'd be happy if we at least started moving in the right direction: working in Europe to fix restrictions on fair use, going after persistent pirates (but only with real evidence and a court order to identify them) rather than those who just don't know how the rules work, and so on.
My two big disappointments with this section were that it didn't consider the possibility of more radical changes in the longer term, e.g., replacing copyright with some alternative form of exclusive rights more in the artist's favour than the middleman's; and that it didn't consider the copyright term extension problem (though this is perhaps unsurprising given the government's quiet U-turn on that question a few months ago).
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
"BT was a public company, the reason it was privatised was exactly because it wasn't perceived to be very good"
With all due respect I think you need to unpack that sentence a bit. I don't think BT was privsatised because "it wasn't perceived to be very good", I think one of the main reasons it was privatised was because the government of the time - the right wing conservative party - adhered to a strategy of privatising public companies whereever possible.
(In 1979, the Conservatives, driven by an ideological preference for the private over the public sector, and justifying the policy on the basis of the scale of investment needed if the UK was to remain a global competitor in communications services, decided that telecommunications should be fully separated from the Post Office. By 1981, the British Telecommunications Act was passed, and the service became British Telecom in October that year) source: wikipedia
If you drive a car, I'll tax the street,
If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat.
If you get too cold I'll tax the heat,
If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet.
Now my advice for those who die
Declare the pennies on your eyes
'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman
And you're working
for no one but me.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Judging by your posts in this discussion I can only guess you have some vested interest in protecting BT. I can't understand why anyone else would come out with such comments from your other post as "BTs mandate only extends to universal service for phone systems and 14.4Kbit/sec capable lines. Stop moving the goal posts.". I mean really, what decade are you living in suggesting it's acceptable that they only have to support a 14.4kbps line and that we shouldn't ever up that?
But I digress, the real reason for my post was to point out that you haven't responded to his point. He pointed out that BT owns the backbone and this is why bandwidth costs are so rediculously high in the UK because BT are farming profits on it.
You then went on to the cost of wholesale lines - sorry but what? What the fuck has the cost of wholesale lines got to do with the cost of bandwidth on the backbone and the profits BT are reaping in there?
Here's some real figures. The cost of a 622mbps L2TP connection from BT (i.e. the source of bandwidth costs) is £1.029 million per year as of December 2008. Prior to December 2008 the cost was roughly 25% cheaper. The technology hasn't increased in price, uplink costs from BT to the rest of the world haven't increased in price, so BT have added an extra £250,000 profit on to each 622mbps uplink an ISP has.
These companies still have little choice than to uplink to BT via these connections meaning LLU is irrelevant to the discussion. Contention on exchanges is really not a problem, upstream bandwidth is and that's where BT is holding the UK's internet future to ransom.
I believe no such thing exists in the UK.
This is why ISPs could freely implement deep packet inspection, phorm and so on without even asking anyone first as opposed to the US where the FCC etc. investigated usage of DPI in trying to disrupt Bittorrent.
Just noticed this bit:
The plans form part of the Government's Digital Britain report, which also see the UK guarantee connections of 2Mbits/sec for every citizen by 2012."
Does this mean that if they fail to meet this guarantee by 31 December 2012 we can all claim a refund on the tax we paid?
...and however small an amount it (currently*) is, it's simply yet more tax by another name.
*You can bet that, once in place,it will still be going years from now, long after the original purpose has come, gone and been forgotten (and will doubtless have been boosted to a far more substantial amount). If there's one thing that the Treasury doesn't do, whoever is nominally running the country, it's to give an inch on dropping sources of tax revenue
Any country that wants to inhibit their own growth by sticking to some ridiculous definition of modern life is a welcome development. It means all the little kids who grow up in the UK countryside will be no competition for my kids twenty years down the road.
Cheers, mate! Your stupidity is appreciated.
Ah, that'd be BT...
I saw this and was immediately reminded of the MPFC sketch where Terry Jones is talking to his colleagues about other things that could be taxed besides smoking and drinking. The sketch ends with Eric Idle saying, "Well, it'll certainly make chartered accountancy a more interesting job."
Broadband is fast becoming essential and even if as another user has said - this plan gets scrapped, it is inevitable that another plan of this ilk will get thought up. You need it, they'll tax it, and with the state of the UK network compared to other countries, no suprise there really. BT actually makes a massive LOSS on its broadband connections and until its 21CN upgrade is rolled out they're frankly screwed when compared to LLU services. BT can't offer things like Annex M, they can't offer engineered broadband and they are selling products such as broadband with an SLA to try and claw back some of the market share....which just isn't happening. I don't think most people are below 2mbps, most people are on around 3 or 4 I'd say. Satellite is a waste of money for rural areas - one tree in the way and you're fucked. 2mbps for every citizen by 2012 just won't be met in my view, no way, and to my knowledge nothing about broadband has ever been guaranteed - least of all speeds!! Would be interested to know what they are going to measure this guarantee upon!! Just because BTs database SAYS you can have 2mbps certainly doesn't mean you're gonna get it, and even then you may well be synced up to your exchange at 2mbps but you certainly aren't going to be downloading at more than 1.8 if that is the case! Bollocks I say.
I argue because it's the internet....and I can.
Its only an option in an area provided with a cable service.
In many areas its easier to get BT broadband than cable. I shouls know, I live in a populous, affluent part of the UK (upper Prem Div footballer type area, if you get my meaning) and Virgin Media won't touch us with a bargepole. Anyhow, Virgin is the second media company after Sky who's profits I prefer not to contribute to.
I rarely use trhe tv for anything but games or dvds. So I'm ditching the telly for a big ass monitor and using my desktop to play movies and hook my consoles up to the monitor.
I hope they come by to try to get me to pay so. Can tell them to get bent.
This is not Pointless is Taxes Taxes & Tyranny!
How come the UK is still a monarchy? Stop complaining about Iran Elections and Wake up put down your government of tyrants!
Whatever happened to the idea of WiMAX? Setting up big towers every so often and having wireless going with signals strong enough to reach out for miles. Seems to me that this would be a lot easier to do than direct cables everywhere.
Yeah, right. By the end of this you can count on the broadband providers ensuring that the government and taxpayers pay for ALL of it -- while they continue to record large profits.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Is 2mbit still broadband? Normal people have 6 mbit ADSL lines in their homes and this is the lower end. Ok in some regions they only get 4mbit out of it. But 2mbit is a very small broadband connection. In cities they go up to 16, 30, 100 mbit. So when implementing fiber optics in the countryside they should aim for 2gbit instead. By 2012 this would be more appropriate then 2mbit. 3 years ago people used 768kbit and this was the upperclass today 6/4 mbit is the lowest value. However, in some regions they only get 768kbit. but when you ever worked with such a line you know calling that broadband is a lie. and by 2012 2mbit will be nothing like broadband.
And by the way. The privatized telcoms all over the world so they get cheaper prices and they got them. Ok they do not invest in the infrastructure and press the last out of the old stuff they got paid by the public. How could they ever think that a commercial company would act in the best interest of the public? Now they have to fix it with taxes. How stupid is that? Take back the infrastructure intpu public hands.
what's his name? FUCK YOU (yes, very subtle, i have to admit, but considering what's happening, subtlety doesn't seem to help)
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?