Digital Britain minister defends broadband tax plansThursday, March 11th 2010 Plans to launch a new tax which will fund the introduction of fibre optic broadband across the UK have been defended by the government's Digital Britain minister. The proposed 50p-a-month broadband tax will offer good value to the UK, the Digital Britain minister has claimed.
Speaking at the National Digital Inclusion 2010 conference, Stephen Timms has stated that the rate, which will be used to deliver fibre optic broadband to 90 per cent of the UK by 2017, is a small amount to pay for big benefits.
According to V3.co.uk, the funding raised will particularly be beneficial to businesses based in countryside locations.
"Businesses in rural areas often say that the thing they really need to be able to compete with those in urban areas is high-speed broadband, so they can send gigabytes of data across the network," he explained.
He added that the service would "provide just that".
The government recently launched the new Broadband Delivery UK body, which will be responsible for introducing universal internet services across the country by 2012.
It will also manage the funding raised by the broadband tax.
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A total of 1.5 million premises are now able to access fibre optic broadband services from BT. Clodagh Murphy of Eclipse Internet has given her backing to Ofcom's calls for customers to be better informed about their likely broadband speed. Ofcom has revealed that the average speed of home broadband has increased. | The beta version of the Virgin Media Player has been released. The number of people signed up to 50Mb broadband with Virgin Media rose by 28 per cent in the second quarter. Ofcom's report into broadband speeds in the UK has been warmly received by Virgin Media. |
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