Alistair Darling’s announcement of a 50p a month telephone tax has been welcomed by some consumer groups and ridiculed by others. In simple terms, each and every person in the UK who has a telephone line attached to their home will be forced to pay a six pound annual charge which is supposedly going to go towards the UK broadband industry and in particular the creation of a national broadband network. However, how much of this money will actually make it into the broadband industry?
There is concern that, like so many other taxes implemented by governments in the past, the income created by this particular tax will ultimately be swallowed up and may not be targeted at the UK broadband sector. If there were some way to monitor the use and investment of the funds raised from the telephone tax this would put more UK consumers and businesses at ease and give them confidence that they were actually investing into the broadband industry.
When you also consider that the UK government is bringing in various laws to attack the problems of Internet piracy there will be a significant increase in the cost of both running an Internet service provider and consumer broadband subscription prices.