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Surprise 50p Broadband Tax In Digital Britain Report
A surprise 50p per month broadband tax has been recommended in Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report.
The new tax, if it goes through, will apply to every home and business with a phone line and help raise an estimated £175 million a year.
The government will make this money available each year to broadband providers like BT to help them fund the roll out of super-fast fibre optic broadband to around 90% of UK homes by 2017.
Ian Fogg, an analyst with Forrester research, believes the sums quoted in the report do not stack up. He said “There are around 34 million fixed lines in the UK and at £6 a year this is going to raise in the low hundreds of millions each year. This is some way off BT’s budget of £1.5bn to put fibre in 40% of homes by 2012”.
Ian continued, “There is going to be a two-tiered internet for a long time, whether the government likes it or not”.
The Digital Britain report also outlined plans to take £200 million from the BBC licence fee to invest in a range of broadband solutions to ensure every UK home has at least 2Mbps broadband access by 2012.
This would again involve giving money to fixed line, wireless and mobile broadband providers.
Sir Michael Lyons, The BBC Trust chairman, reacted angrily to the plan, saying, “The licence fee must not become a slush fund to be dipped into at will, leading to spiralling demands on licence fee payers to help fund the political or commercial concerns of the day.” This would lead to the licence fee being seen as another form of general taxation”.
Conversely, shares in BT surged by 5.8%, buoyed by the news that the company could be receiving significant funding to help roll out its fibre optic broadband network.
Digital Britain Report To Be Finally Unveiled
The time has finally come for the Digital Britain report to be published and unveiled to the UK. While a lot of the report has been outlined back in January, it is thought that today’s published report will have a few surprises in store.
This afternoon Lord Carter will stand up at the RSA in London and give his vision for the UK’s digital future. The report has taken eight months of solid research and lobbying and it is hoped that it will completely overhaul the UK’s digital infrastructure and guarantee the development of the country’s economy.
So just how important is the Digital Britain report going to be? Chris Williams, the partner of Economic Consulting at Deloitte, said, “This report is critical. Though how critical will remain to be seen.”
There are five main objectives in the report and it is thought that there will be more than 40 action points outlined this afternoon too.
The main goal of the report is to provide all UK homes with a broadband connection speed of at least 2Mbps by the time the Olympic Games reaches the country in 2012.
There is also speculation that the report will require the BBC to give up part of the £3.6 billion in public funding in order to help out ITV who are currently struggling.
Online music and movie piracy will also be addressed as a major issue in the report with plans for a new rights agency to be introduced to help put a stop to illegal file sharing.
One thing is for sure, there will certainly be a few surprises unveiled in the report this afternoon – which will create a lot of debate and criticism.
Broadband ISP’s Warning Letters To Pirates Ineffective
A recent survey conducted by the Media law group, Wiggin, has found that illegal file sharers (pirates) are not deterred by warning letters from their broadband internet service provider (ISP).
Out of the 1,500 broadband customers surveyed, no more than 33% would stop pirating content if they received a warning letter.
The results come just before the Digital Britain report is officially published. Within the report it is expected that Lord Carter will make it a requirement for ISP’s to send warning letters to persistent illegal file sharers in the hope that it will deter them.
As of yet there are no real plans as to what can be done if a user ignores the warning. It is thought that there will be some kind of service restriction placed upon them, but how exactly this will work is not yet certain.
The CEO of TalkTalk, Charles Dunstone, has stated recently, “If you try speed humps or disconnections for peer to peer, people will simply either disguise their traffic or share the content another way. It is a game of Tom and Jerry and you will never catch the mouse. The mouse always wins in this battle and we need to be careful that politicians do not get talked into putting legislation in place that, in the end, ends up looking stupid.”
One thing is for sure, the results of the Wiggin survey show that warning letters from broadband providers will mainly be ineffective. It seems that some kind of restriction on broadband supply could be the only way to deter users in the short term.
Lord Carter To Quit Government After Digital Britain
Lord Carter, the Communications Minister, is reportedly set to quit the Government after the Digital Britain report is published on the 16th June.
It is no secret that the compilation of the Digital Britain report, designed to help shape the UK’s Internet and Media regulation, has caused a lot of debate and criticism since its inception.
Despite this, the reasons behind Lord Carter’s intending departure are not clear, with the Times indicating that he has a desire to return to the private sector.
There has been reports of strong disagreements between ministers over whether government funding should be used to help the broadband sector, and in particular Lord Carter’s goal of achieving 2Mb broadband access for all by 2012.
In recent weeks Gordon Brown has enlisted the help of two top tech industry figures, Sir Alan Sugar and Sir Tim-Berners Lee to boost credentials and help to enhance the internet sector – so news of Lord Carter’s departure will come as a blow.
There is also talk that the co-founder of Lastminute.com, Martha Lane Fox, is also joining the ranks as a digital champion.
Free Broadband Not Enough To Connect Millions
Recent research from Ofcom has found that 43% of UK adults who are currently without internet access would not connect even if they were offered free broadband and a free computer.
Throughout the UK there are 17 million people (30% of adults) who do not have any internet access, which means that over 7 million Brits would not use the internet even if they were given free broadband.
The research is bad news for the government as they try to entice more homes to go online and use the government’s online services.
The main group of people who are not connected to the Internet are the older retired’s who do not understand how it works, with many saying that they had never used a computer before in their life.
Ofcom’s Market Development Partner , Peter Phillips, said, “Broadband is becoming increasingly important to people’s ability to participate in the economy and society. The report shows that some creativity will be required if we wish to capture the imaginations of those who have yet to engage with the benefit’s the internet may bring.”
The results of the survey aren’t all negative however. Around one in five of the adults that are offline at the moment said that they were planning to go online within the next six months.
Broadband ISP’s To Not Cut Off Illegal File Sharers
According to reports, the UK’s broadband internet service providers (ISP’s) will not be forced to cut off illegal file sharers as part of the final Digital Britain Report.
There has been ongoing talks into what can be done to stop persistent illegal file sharers and one option was to force broadband providers to shut down the users accounts.
Instead, there are going to be certain measures introduced in order to limit and restrict illegal file sharing. Speaking to BBC News Online, a spokesperson for the Department of Culture, Media and Support said, “The Digital Britain Report coming out soon will build on last year’s Memorandum of understanding between content holders and ISPs to tackle illegal file sharing”.
“It is likely to include an obligation on ISPs to send out letters to people who are infringing copyright.”
The spokesperson also hinted that Ofcom would have new powers to impose ‘technical solutions’ to help stop persistent illegal file sharers.
The actual measures are set to be announced as part of the Digital Britain report due to be published on the 16th June.
