Broadband tax of £6 per year to fund rural fibre rollout

Statist Cnut gives State Aid to State Monopoly?

Is this what it seems to be, which is yet another subsidy for BT so that it can continue to pump taxpayers' money in to its shareholders pockets?

Wurzel Tax

Why should we pay for these cousin-copulating rural bumpkins who eat hay all day? They won't even know what to do with the internet, they'll just dig up the fibre and sell it or eat it or something.

Brilliant <\sarcasm>

OK, so the poorer, inner-city areas will now fund the more affluent, rural areas. Gee there's a logic I can't help but be unimpressed with. It's not my fault that some people choose to live in picturesque, exclusive (and, in their minds, elitist) areas, yet it seems to befall me and my ilk (i.e. hard-working, lower-paid tax payers) to fund their sodding broadband. Goodbye, Labour - yet ANOTHER cash-based reason to NOT vote for you at the next General Election.

Also, "Asked if he believed it would be a popular measure, he said: "We'll have to wait and see."" REALLY?!?! He's not got the slightest inkling that this 'measure' will be about as popular as Gary Glitter at a Kindergarten open day.

Idiocy. Utter idiocy!

What?

We are being made to subsidise broadband for people, quite a lot of whom don't actually want broadband?

Please stop the planet, I want to get off now.

Stealth tax

It is a stealth tax in that it is a tax in all but name. As far as I see it, if people who live in rural areas want or need broadband they can pay for it themselves. I, like most of the other people who will be subsidising this shambles without benefiting, live in a town where I can receive a perfectly decent internet connection, albeit paying through the nose for line rental already.

If people want broadband they only have to move. Otherwise, make them pay for it and don't force yet another unjustified price hike on the rest of us!

My Gran will be really happy.

I'm sure she'll be super keen to fund the next generation of super-fast broadband.

she's always complaining that with out fibre to home her current 22mbps is just not fast enough for her torrents to download at the same time as running apache server to to distribute her content to the other people in her sheltered housing.

another tax to pay

getting taxed on everything now.

cant even die without paying tax!

What about mobile broadband

This government has no idea on IT.

The 3G carriers are trying to expand data coverage and encourage usage, with HSDPA cat 10 users will have connection speeds of 10.8 MB.

Why go to all the trouble and great expense of laying a fixed line to the doorstep?

Wake up to mobile comms.

Hmm .....

Am I the only person who thinks that providing universal broadband Internet is solving the wrong problem? And that we should be concentrating instead on making sure that Internet access simply never becomes a necessity in the first place?

Instead of introducing broadband so that people in rural areas can benefit from Internet-only shopping deals, for instance, why aren't we insisting for businesses to make their goods available at the same price in bricks-and-mortar stores for the benefit of non-computer owners?

Nobody should be obliged to own a computer. Making people dependent on toxic, proprietary technology in order to live their everyday lives is tantamount to privatising the Law of the Land.

Oh well, back to my little shack in the woods .....

Oh ... great... thanks NuLabour...

I love how NuLabour treats my bank account like their piggy bank. When they are finished giving my taxes to their Banker friends, their other friends in the broad band business want some cash as well, so NuLabour decide to dip in and grab some more cash from us all. Wonderful.

Its not as if we don't pay (waste) enough money on taxes already ... but no, now they have to dream up some more reasons to just take more money from us.

Maybe NuLabour wants better broadband in the country because they are getting ready to retire to the country, now they have robbed us all mercilessly for years.

A Shambles

Though not unexpected.

Handy for your 2nd home

Thinking of getting a rural retreat with that city bonus? Put off by the lack of broadband?

Worry no more - problem solved, courtesy of the taxpayer.

Sold everyone out to "the industry"!

They have also sold everyone out by offering to supply names of serial copyright infringers to the rights holders directly.

We all know the gov, OFCOM and the media industry can be trusted to play fair and get their facts right first time!

oooh you city slickers!

We rich elitist country dwellers, or penniless bumpkin hayseed village idiots according to the commenters above, are not all millionaires like the London City guys who nearly broke the country and needed billions in bail-out money.

We ordinary town or country dwellers earn a helluva lot less than those with city weightings and would like to use the internet as much as you guys who think milk grows on milk-trees. Oh, and I wear a tie to work, spent years in IT support, can use phones and stuff and have a television at home. Nor am I being subsidised by someone who thinks an Underground strike is the end of the world as we know it.

Let's pull together and complain about ID cards, Paris Hilton and BT profits from Indian call centres going to their shareholders

Rural areas...

are definitely not affluent. Here I am in Shropshire, look out of my window into a village that is mainly council housing. This village is less than 2 miles from a mid sized market town. My 'broadband' doesn't go beyond 1.5Mbps. People saying this is the city funding the rural areas are wrong. It's just everyone funding BT.

Yet more tight-arse comments

The comments on Reg articles often amaze me in their selfishness, and this is yet another example. How can people begrudge so little money to give people a benefit that we all take for granted? No, people in rural areas aren't all rich, and of course it costs more money to connect them up. Without a nationalised provider giving a fixed-price universal service (as we had in the good old days rolling-out telephones), these people are never going to get connected.

What else do you object to? Should people who live in the countryside pay more to get their post delivered? Or what about their electricity? Maybe the council shouldn't bother building any roads for them until they pay ten times the road tax? Sheesh... what is it about living in London that makes you all into selfish twunts who value nothing but money?

Hidden Agenda

Come on boys and girls, get with the real story behind this.

Not content with shoving ID cards on us all Labour now plan to stick a web cam in every home. Only to get the decent piccies they want they need a network pipe with the capacity to collect the information.

The sooner we get shot of this lot the better. can't someone send them a packet of swine flu?

Bloody cheek

So BT etc who have been creaming in the profits for years from over selling the same bandwidth to as many people as possible and blaming us when we try to use it. Now expect us to pay from them to extend their service so they can rip even more people off.

Amazing not only do I now have to pay for bandwidth I don't get, I'm also going to have to pay so someone else can get limited broadband and the ISPs are going to sit back and enjoy the extra profits.

Taxes

I think the idea is that the tax will work like fuel tax. The suppliers set the price according to what the think the market will take, then the government take a chunk of that. If the tax didn't exist then the suppliers' profits would be higher; the price would not be any lower. This works because supply is somewhat limited.

The Great British Public have been voting in favour of indirect taxation for the past 30 years, Labour have just carried on where the Tories left off. It would be interesting to see what would happen if someone campaigned on the promise of 'No Stealth Taxes, just a huge Income Tax'.

I was shocked when I lived in Sheffield 10 years ago to meet people my age who were baffled and intimidated by computers. We cannot afford to have children growing up today who aren't comfortable with using computers and accessing the internet. Private enterprise has so far failed to provide decent internet access in rural areas and are disinterested in doing so in the future. Rural broadband could be a good long term investment for the country.

Rural

I am "happy" to report that there is a number of financially disadvantaged people in the village I live in. We're a few miles from the M40, so not geographically rural, but we get a maximum of 500kbps downstream on ADSL and the exchange is not unbundled and regardless of what Virgin Media's marketing team think - we're not in their cable area. Only Vodaphone gives us any mobile signal - and that's poor (one bar) - so mobile broadband is out. Digital TV is not great either - it keeps dropping out.

The village is developing "social housing" and there are several sites in the village being considered by the parish council. You need a car to get anywhere which is expensive enough as it is (road charging would damage the ability for people to live here). The nearest farm shop is a mile and a half away and the nearest town is a few miles beyond that.

I think that believing that people living in the country are generally more affluent is a little naive. I also think that believing research that says that people believe that Internet access is as important as electricity is also naive.

I can see how it could help some of my older neighbours for online shopping with delivery - that's vital for them now we don't have local post offices or amenities. Also local government changes mean access to their web sites for support services is critical. As applications continue to appear online, then the digital divide will continue to get wider.

Many of the people living here, particularly the poorer ones, have been in the village for generations and are now tied to the area by bonds of caring for elderly relatives, or because they cannot afford to move. They live in ex-council houses now run by a Housing Association. Perhaps not the image of the affluent country-set imagined by some urbanites.

Because my local exchange will probably never be unbundled, I already pay £180 per year more than people in cities with access to "free" "up to 24Mbps" broadband - just to get 500kbps.

My lifestyle allows me to get by with that capacity and I can afford it. I'm not that bothered about IPTV and I don't stream content or use P2P applications. Lucky me.

To those people in the city complaining about subsidising connectivity improvements in rural areas, the money that I pay today is not being invested in new services for rural locations - it is going to subsidise the excellent service enjoyed by people in the cities. Thanks for your support.

I am happy to pay a bit more for my copper service to make sure that my poorer neighbours can get access to a reasonable suite of communication services. I think it will help prevent rural communities being increasingly seen as the sole preserve of the wealthy who are able to afford to drive and fend for themselves.

@M7S

That may well be true, but remember you do still have the right to move to an area where there is a bus service that's reliable and close to your home, as well as a broadband connection.

The point here is that no-one 'put' you where you live. No-one 'forces' you to stay there. No-one (and I apologise for the bluntness here) commenting here really cares about you. Nothing personal, really.

But I think I (and I daresay others) have a right to be affronted by a bloody 'tax' levy so folk living outside of a service area can have access to a service we already pay not an inconsiderable amount of money for.

Our Great Leader...

...said that alongside water and electricity, broadband is one of life's essentials.

Here's an experiment for you. Take 3 cabinet ministers and deprive one of them of water, one of electricity and one of broadband and see which one dies first. If necessary take the whole parliamentary nu-lab party and repeat until absolutely sure, or all are dead, however long it takes.

QQ moar

waaah waaah went the townies....

Because without this, country folks haven't been been funding your super duper fast broadband for years which they have no chance in hell of benefiting from now would they, and it wouldn't really have continued now would it.?

Kind of like the crap loads of council tax we pay for the priviledge of NOT receiving the services townies do, higher fuel prices than in towns, and we get to have only one bus a week 3/4 mile away... post that arrives at 2 in the afternoon, heck ho wants it in the morning eh.. Higher fuel prices out here too, because with no bus services having a car is flipping luxury of course, you don't really need to leave the house do you ....... *snip*

Subsidies eh?

Having subsidised those bonus-stealing, expense-stuffed, twin-home city dwellers with their calf-skin pouched iPhones tucked into the gloove boxes of their Lexus GSes for the last 10 years, the possibility of getting a portion of it back to my 480Kbps-on-a-good-day, no-mobile-coverage hovel just three miles from the main Exeter to Plymouth trunk route fills me with glee. Stuff you all.

The Tax

Didn't I read on this very site recently that 30% of the population have no intention of ever getting broadband or indeed connected to the internet in any way? Why should these people pay £6 a year to subsidise broadband for those who do want broadband?

Or are they in typical labour fashion is this yet another stealth tax? I'd like to see evidence that 100% of the levy goes to telcos and that they spend 100% of it on delivering rural broadband. More likely the government will keep a huge chunk for "administration" and then the telcos will spend what they do get on improving urban broadband.

A better way to achieve the stated end is to make the telcos pay. There must be some way of controlling customer numbers. Maybe set a ratio of urban to rural customers that they must maintain.

This smacks of the recording industriy's proposed broadband tax. They wanted to tax all broadband subscribers to compensate them for pirated music. That worked on the assumption that all broadband users are pirates. This tax works on the assumption that all landline telephone users want broadband.

And of course it's likely to force businesses onto VoIP much more quickly if they have to pay an extra £6 per landline per year. Which will of course mean a reduction in revenue for the telcos which will in turn mean less money to spend on developing broadband, and probably a few more people laid off in the telecoms industry.

All in all it appears that they've thought this one through for less time than those eejits who proposed taxing the oil companies to bring down petrol prices.

As you say it looks like the government have heard the complaints about the lack of rural broadband and decided to create a headline grabbing initiative that will make it look like they are doing something and make them some tax revenue in the mean time.

Why should I bail out BT shareholders?

This is a stupid idea.

Why should the nation bail out BT shareholders because BT can't operate or invest in its own infrastructure?

Thank goodness Carter won't be around in a few weeks.

Its a shame I will never be able to recover the time I wasted reading the Digital Britain report.

The Final Third

It seems that the rural dwellers will be paying the subsidy for up to five years longer without a sniff of improvement. At least the urbanites will get the improved speeds by 2012 for their extra money.

Since we don't have a state run GPO anymore who will end up owning the infrastructure - oh I know the privately owned companies who will then use it to carry other services as they feel fit leading to congestion and a fantastic bitrate with no packet room.

50p per person per month is not a small tax

and much better spent on health and/or education.

I'm really not happy about taxes funding private companies such as BT.

Exactly how much of this #digitalbritain was about Britain and not pandering to corporations?

Of course, the real reason..

why Noo Labour are wanting everyone to have a broadband connection is so that they can keep tabs on us all by spying on the websites we visit, the phone calls we make etc. etc.

Kill a few birds

Now lets see, it is going to be raised on a fixed line - oops - return it and just use a mobile. BT goes broke cause no one has a phone line any longer!

By the time we get to 2012 the speed requirement will be 1Gb/sec so all the planning and infrastructure should be to get fibre to every home - half measures will take years and be of little use by the time it does arrive.

Finally lets see I am capped at 20GB per month, a 100Mb/sec line would last how long? A 100Mb/sec line will require a 20 fold increase in the cap AKA 400GB per month. Multiply that by 20 million homes, that is 8Million Tera Byte (is that a Peta Byte - can't remember) per month, boy is that going to cause the backbone a problem!

Mind you I doubt GCHQ could handle that so maybe the thought of deep packet inspection etc will fall by the wayside! (Some hope).

@A J Stiles

------------------

Am I the only person who thinks that providing universal broadband Internet is solving the wrong problem? And that we should be concentrating instead on making sure that Internet access simply never becomes a necessity in the first place?

------------------

Same goes for the Telephone and Television surely?

I think allowing access to arguably one of the greatest inventions of modern times is not a requirement for shopping but surely a right for everyone?

Anyway, I am for the levy if only because I want a faster connection than my 2ish MB ADSL.

Yes I live in the sticks, yes it was my choice. No I can't afford to have BT run a fiber line to the exchange just for me.

Evening up Broadband access will benefit us all in terms of commerce but then I would say that, I'm a Web Developer!

I'm a celebrity - get me outta here!

Well I'm not really a celebrity, so there.

What a prize plonker that Brown git is. We have 2 phone lines currently. As a direct result of this additional tax we'll shortly have none.

On the one hand we can get by with a mobile phone (we don't use phones of any description very much). On the other we'll just use the broadband we've already got to run a Skype account. Which others who will be contributing their cash can help pay for.

And so it came to pass that Labour passed a law which reduced the profitability of landline phone companies. Own goal ref!

We need that pop sound re-made. What was it - Gordon is a moron? Sad to say that with him in charge it gives morons a bad name.

It should be provided like gas

A lot of rural areas aren't on gas mains either. So people who want gas get a big tank which is filled up every now and again by an even bigger gas truck.

Rather than running high speed internet to these areas, simply send them a couple of DVDs each month with the lastest internet page updates and any emails they've been sent

50p now...

people forget, a telephone line and internet is not your right to have... its a service thats provided by a company that is there to make profit, it has to cost less to provide that service than they charge, or it has to close down. thats the same with any business....

i moved into a flat a few years back, to get my phone line installed, it cost me £99+vat... for some bloke to turn up.... put a new socket on the wall coz the old one was broke...

more or less at the same time a friend of mine moved into a cottage in the middle of nowhere... they ordered a phone line.... £99+vat for 15 telegraph poles, over 1.5 miles of cable.... a weeks work for the engineers....

Within a few months, no doubts BT recovered the cost of my instalation,,, if they were not in profit on it in the first place... but i suspect they will bever recover the cost of installing one line to a rural house...

I suspect that even with the 50p tax, the cost of providing better bb to the back of nowhere will soon spiral out of control, and the tax will soon be up to £2 then where will it stop? £5? £10? all I know is that if the whole country gets 24Mbit or faster, the backbone will not cope with it all, then the gov will be dipping into our pockets again...

Mines the one stuffed with FO cables...

right on time....(3 week cycles appearing regularly now)

Told you a BT pension fund bailout was coming.....i thought they would have packaged it with better lies. silly me.

Hypothecated tax

No I don't think so. Its a subsidy for BT if anything, or its as hypothecated as the car tax disc, which is not at all. The big businesses have the governments ear, thats the way it works in this country now. Now I live in London my rates are £500 a year as opposed to £2000 in Suffolk. But then I dont have a garden. Life is a compromise, you cant have it all. How an earth the principle of the free market in broadband provision can be reconciled with a compulsory tax beats me. Paris as she could beat me...

Not happy about this....

I live in a place with excellent broadband links. I can choose between Virgin Media (up to 50MB), one of the various BT line options (up to 16MB), mobile broadband from any of the major 3G providers, or satellite broadband. Or I could steal a neighbour's unencrypted wifi. The choice is mine.

Clearly, I have this choice because I chose to live in Suburbia. I also have local shops and a main line train station a few minutes walk from my house. I can access a major motorway within a few minutes, and all the roads around here are paved (potholes excluded).

Why should I subsidise someone else's broadband when mine is working perfectly? Seeing as I already pay a premium for my premium services, why should the government decide it's ok for me to pay an extra £6 a year so some farmer in the middle of nowhere can whack off to porn on the web?

Like it or not, people in built up communities have best connections for everything. But we also tend to have the highest crime, more air pollution and highest council tax. Perhaps the Government can lobby a new tax to right these wrongs?

WTF is this crap

they can afford to live in the country but apparantly can't afford to pay for the costs of installing a service they want. I (living in a city) have to pay for it.

hey i wanna live in the country. can we tax people who live in the country so i can live in the country too? then if more people lived in the country then there would be internet access.

i'd like fresh air and trees and peace and quiet. apparantly that helps you live longer. but no I'VE GOT TO PAY FOR FACEBOOK ACCESS FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE THIS. the only upside to this is because i don't have fresh air and stuff i'll be paying that £6 a year extra for less years because I'll be dead.

quite why we have to pay for these moaning fuckers i don't know. your business/life depends on internet access? move a damn inhabited area. i heard some whinging bint on radio 4 moaning on about this, she runs a business from home. in the country. well all the damn money she saves on petrol should pay for a fibre line, no?

lets put to some analysis. living in country = probably well off = country set = mix with MP = able to buy agreeable dinners for said MP or provide him with fraudulent receipts = MP lobbies on your behalf = every sod in the country pays an extra £6 a year except MPs who get it on expenses.

these hay chewing buggers are always whinging on about stuff costing more, like fuel for their 4x4s cause they need it cause zey lives in zee coontry. Are we proposing adding £6 a year on road tax to pay for fuel for them? nope because its a damn lifestly choice. can't afford the rent? dont live there. can't afford the fuel? dont live there. want to run a business in the middle of nowhere and need internet access? yeah lets tax everybody.

fuckers.

*sigh*

I like the fact that people believe this will go towards Fiber Optics cabling for faster internet.

What a load of crap ...

We all know this is just money that'll end up in Gordon's back pocket.

HELL NO!

What, considering that BT's wasted so much money on giving cities what they want but don't bother looking at those who really could use it but can't because they are out in the sticks, and considering BT's rape that is the monthly fee for a line I don't ever make calls on... screw that!

Wait a minute...

Hang on, I live in East London in essentially a bunker, I have to get both my telly and internet through the phone line, which is about as far away as it is possible to get from the exchange, and I can't get cable because they cabled up the area before my flat technically existed, so my line speed is atrocious (and I have to deal with bloody Tiscali)...

...and now I have to pay an extra fiddy pee a month to provide 2 Meg broadband to a people out in the sticks who have not expressed a collective desire for broadband in the first place?

The only words I have are two, and the second of them is 'off'.

An infringement of your civil Liberty and the freedom of speech.

Forget what they are allegedly intending to spend the money on, its a TAX, not even a tax set at a fixed percentage, a made up figure, with no cap which means they can raise it as they please.

Make no mistake, they are taxing your freedom of speech, your link with the rest of the world, they are creating a Telecommunications class system of the Haves and Have nots, if i choose an ISP thats my choice, but once Tax is introduced, payment is compulsory.

Another creeping erosion of our Civil Liberties, this time apparently for a faster connection speed.............Go take a hike Gordon.

Competition.... not in bloody Hull

"The former Ofcom boss said strong competition in the ADSL market had driven broadband prices down and that he expected the impact of the levy to be "competed away"."

So i wont have to pay the £6 a year, because i live in Hull which has Karoo as the ONLY ISP available, therefore there is no competition?

Just my 0.02Cr's-worth

50p per landline to install more landlines to get 50p per landline to install more landlines - wow, Gordon's finally found his perpetual-motion money-making machine!... And what's the odds that they will need to keep the tax going once everyone is cabled up? I mean, they've got to pay for the running of the service, and since it is already in place it won't cost any more to keep collecting it.

I'd like to believe that the "fighting" between the townies and the bumpkins is all light-hearted and jovial, but sadly I don't think it is. Yes, there are some people who choose to live out in the "middle of nowhere" and have a pile of money to live on. But then there are a lot of people in the country who no longer have jobs due to the demise of farming, same as a lot of townies no longer have jobs because all the factories have shut. Industrialization killed a lot of the old jobs (why pay a dozen car assemblers and fitters when one robot will do the same work for a tiny fraction of the cost, and why pay a dozen people to work on a dozen farms when modern machinery can harvest more crops far more efficiently?) and the government is even doing away with the only real alternative to these 'traditional' jobs - the armed forces are being decimated too. Actually, it's worse than that - "decimation" dates back to the Roman Empire and referes to the killing of every tenth man. Our current manpower levels are down to what, half of the WWll levels? And they've killed off, sorry, "amalgamated" dozens of regiments going back centuries into five or six units with no regard for the esprit de corps that made our forces the best in the world.

I remember reading a few years(!) ago about how certain African nations were rolling out wireless broadband, and wouldn't it be great if the USA and the UK could do the same but that it would cost too much to replace the existing cable infrastructure with the (then) new wireless tech. Well, wouldn't this be an ideal time to force BT to replace the cables with wireless? I mean, if the Labour Minister for Overseas Development (or was it 'Overseas Aid' at that time?) thought that was such a great idea that we had to spend billions of OUR taxes to help fund it, why don't they have it done over here too?

Finally, do we really want to allow the Party that has brought in the worst anti-privacy legislation in the world to dictate that we must all have 24hr broadband "coverage"? Are all those stories of geeks catching criminals nicking their computers by 'remote controlling' their webcams merely urban legends? How long before it becomes a crime to switch off your computer, or cover the webcams? I know Ben Elton is (was?) a Labour supporter, but I didn't realise they would take his book "Blind Faith" as a starting point for their IT manifesto...

Piracy, pure and simple. First they take the 50p a month (which will have to increase quite quickly - how many government-related IT projects have run to time and/or budget?), then they will be able to track everytihng you access (RIPA, the new "security" database, etc) and then it will be too late.

(by the way, notice how GodEmperor Gordon Brown has suddenly gone quiet on the "electoral reform" front? He's just working the required legislation through his lawyers, then he'll force it through Parliament under the Parliament Act, so nobody can stop him from Westminster. There are plenty of laws he can use to stop 'the people' rising up in protest - or did you seriously think that the anti-terror and anti-conspiracy legislation was solely aimed at 'furriners' intent on overthrowing truth, Justice and the ZaNu Labour way? And of course, we won't be able to have a General Election while his reforms are going through the books, so no getting rid of him come next summer. You think I am wrong? Just wait and see... and be afraid. VERY afraid)

Scotland being double charged!

So hang on a second - why, as a Scot am I being taxed for rural broadband access when the Scottish Government have already committed to 100% broadband access for all Scots (including the highlands and islands) that has already been paid for by my taxes. The project, paid for from Scottish ministers and contracted to BT/Avanti is nearing completion after being started in 2008...

see http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/People/BroadbandforScotland for more info.

@AceRimmer

You can't get better download capacity than a truck full of DVDs *8). The latency sucks though, my ping's through the floor.

Compromise

There are about 60 million of us on our little island and it's unfortunate, but each and every one of use cant pick and choose our own taxation/benefit system. There are some compromises required.

I work in a city and live in the countryside and surprise, surprise there are extremes of poverty and wealth to be seen in both areas.

Maybe if doing business was made a little easier in the sticks everyone wouldn't need to flock to the cities each day.

Keeping up with the Jones's

We run our business on Virgin 2Mb cable. It works fine and is completely fast enough for all our needs.

Sure we dont have hundreds of users, just half a dozen.

And sure the upload speeds are a bt slow, too slow to host stuff (which I dont think they really like anyhow).

Maybe for us all to watch hd streaming tv we'd need more.. but we are a bsiness doing business tasks.... and its enough.

All this "we need 100Mb" - why?

Tony

@ Bernie 2

You have fail to understand my point.

A warehouse and website are cheaper to run than a store, for sure. Stealing is cheaper than buying, as well. What's your point?

Discriminating against non-computer owners is wrong. If the practical upshot of ending that discrimination is that goods online become more expensive, tough titty I say. At least that way, people who don't want to risk being held to ransom by greedy corporations peddling proprietary technology won't have to pay more for their basic essentials of life. That's got to be better than being forced to enrich billionaires.

so what?

I no longer have a landline - I use voip or my mobile.

As for all the moaning minnies with their "stealth tax" rubbish, its six quid a year- the same dopes probably spend more than that each week on lottery tickets, driving to the corner shop and running their quad-core dual sli enabled internet browsers. Still, why let facts get in the way of a good rant eh?

God, I wish I was back living in NuZimbabwe!

You lucky b'stards - only 50 pence a month for broadband. I pay 20 squids.

Or, did I miss something?

WTF!

So Mr Brown and his cronies are now taxing everyone with a BT landline in order to create the world’s largest pirate ship (UK).

Does this mean that we will now have to change our national flag to the Jolly Roger?

There they be captain off the Starboard bow. (RIAA/MPAA) Argh give em a broadside lads. prepare to repel borders.

Avast they be getting closer! Turn the VPN on em lads.

@ACs - 08:43 & 10:35

Chaps (I'm assuming you're chaps, apologies if not), you're missing the point here. Yes, I'm happy to pay the same tax as everyone else for all the services that we all should be entitled to; roads, sanitation, armed forces, etc. The issue is that some people WON'T be subject to the tax because they do not yet HAVE broadband (or phone lines in some cases). If the whole country were forced to pay the tax so that the whole country HAS the service, then so be it. But to be discriminated against because I can access something that someone else decided to install in my area is totally unacceptable. I bet those of you living in rural areas would be horrified if you had to pay a 'spread the countryside' tax so those of us inner-city dwellers, exempt from the tax, could have more greenery installed.

Farmer Palmer has a message for you townies

Get off my land.

That is all.

So what I want to know is...

When they've taken my money and given it to privately held companies, who will then turn around and flog a service that OUR tax money paid for, thereby generating a profit for themselves - how exactly do I get a return on my investment?

If the government wants broadband to be available across the country, mandate it by law. It is not my concern (and should remain that way) how the various telecos/broadband providers choose to comply with this. It seems that this is analogous to raising a cow from birth to full maturity using my own funds, then giving it away to McDonalds and having them charge me for the flippin' hamburger they excise from its flesh.

Another bleedin tax and to pay for what? Giles the farmer to be able to watch Dolly in hi-def on Youtube. Nice to know the powers that be have their priorities straight while 'administering' a country with needs - healthcare/schools etc stretched to breaking point.

Yes but!!

You can tax anything that is real; bags of flour, bags of tea, even windows, but you can't tax something intangible. What next, a tax on living?

Anarchist have got a point.

@John Smith 19 - FAILED Country 101!

Nope, you're obviously an owner of a Chelsea Tractor (Range Rover for the 'merkans).

It's "Gerrorff my laaand!"

wtf?

oh frikking great!

so, what they are saying to me is that my broadband speed will go down (due to even more people on the network and even more over congestion) and for the privelege i have to pay?

this seems more dodgy than us all paying tax on blank media as it MIGHT be used for pirating!

ffs i hate this government.

@"How is a tax that is announced as a new tax in any way a stealth tax? I don't neccessarily agree with it (people living in rural areas are generally more affluent than those in urban areas so the whole idea seems counterintuitive; perhaps BT should just charge more for rural areas?) but to label it as a stealth tax seems a bit silly." - i only found out about it on here... so it wasnt well publicised was it? i watch the news every day also.

i loved the way gordon the gimp (like gordon the gopher but with his own hand up his arse) said the other day that broadband was as important as water and electricity! really? because i thought broadband needed electricity to survive, and we need water to survive. i take it we need youtube also to survive in this country....