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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
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.
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
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. Virgin [Media] doesn't allow people to use their network at all.
A public network is always the right answer. You set up the cables, maintain them, and then set the fees based on what you're paying to keep it up-and-running.
With your hugely sarcastic post you also didn't address why these private for-private companies should be getting a huge check out of the pocket of tax payers? Or a better question, why they're getting a huge check which they can then turn around and use to make EVERY MORE money? It is just handing them the keys to the vault.
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?
"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.
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