Slashdot Mirror
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.
I'm on 3mbit, and I don't mind. I'd prefer more speed, but 3mbit is actually enough to watch HD stuff off gametrailers.com, and finish downloads reasonably fast. If I need to download something big, like a steam game, I can always leave my computer on overnight.
Much more important than raw speed - the amount of bandwidth. I get 200GB/mo, which is very difficult to use up entirely. Somehow I doubt the UK/BT will give its customers that much.
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.
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.
There speaks someone who knows fuck all about the UK market. The network suppliers are merely carriers for ISPs. My phone line is provided by BT. My broadband travels over BT's network. I can choose from over 100 ISPs. I suggest you take a look at how broadband works in the UK before you continue to make yourself look like a clown. Hint: It's completely different to the USA.
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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
They're giving the money to BT (DSL) and Virgin (cable). BT is a private for-profit company and as such will limit what it will allow competition to do and set the prices higher than a public network.
BT is tightly controlled on what it can and cannot do with regard to its infrastructure and allowing other companies to have access to it - there are fairly low upper limits to the pricing structure that BT can use to wholesale its lines, and there is always the option of Local Loop Unbundling.
The problem is, it always ends up with the profitable areas being cherry picked by providers, and the outlying areas being left in the cold. In these situations you have two options - subsidise BT to provide a loss making line, or have the government form a public entity to provide connectivity using wholesale or LLU lines.
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?
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
High speed Internet access is a luxury.
73% of the UK disagree with you:
UK consumers now believe broadband is becoming as essential a utility as electricity or water, according to a panel of government advisers. Some 73% of those questioned described a high-speed connection as important.
ADSL2+ (used by Be) can only offer the full 24Mbps if you're less than about 500m from the exchange, regardless of the quality of the cable BT installed.
No, sharing copyrighted material isn't illegal.
Please don't buy into the lies spread by the big media companies.
Sharing material where it is prohibited by the terms of the copyright is illegal.
Sharing material where the terms of the copyright allow you to do so, isnt.