According to the ’Digital Britain’ report, outlined by Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw in Parliament yesterday, you, me and everyone else face a new "broadband tax" on their landline telephones to pay for super-fast internet to be extended nationwide under new Government plans.
The £6-a-year levy on fixed phone lines would subsidise the cost of installing next-generation broadband networks in areas where they would not otherwise be economically viable.
Every home and business in the UK will have access to at least 2Mbps broadband by 2012 under the plans.
Hold it just there, Mr Brown. What about people like me? I am already on a service receiving 20Mbps which has the option to upgrade to 50Mbps! Will I have to pay this tax?
Many years ago, the then Telewest, now Virgin Media, had the foresight to install fibre optic cables in many areas to supply cable TV, telephone and then a few years ago, highish speed broadband internet.
In all that time, BT have been dragging their heels, claiming that laying fibre optic cables would be too costly.
At 2Mbps this much vaunted, tax funded “super-fast” service will obviously still be using the old, copper cabled telephone lines, a technology well over a hundred years old.
As Robert Fulford said, “I have seen the future and it doesn’t work.”!
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