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Digital
Osborne abolishes phone tax
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 24 June 2010
One extra bit of budget news we didn’t include in yesterday’s CMU budget round up. Among Georgie Osborne’s wide-ranging budget flim flam was the announcement that the controversial phone tax devised by the previous Labour government is to be scrapped. Labour had proposed charging a 50p a month levy on everyone’s phone lines to help fund the roll out of faster broadband internet services across the UK, especially to rural areas.
Instead of using the phone tax to raise the money needed to fund high speed broadband roll out, the ConDem coalition plan to use TV licence money originally set aside to fund the switchover to digital TV (not all of which has been spent). The cash will be made available to private businesses who invest their own money in enhancing Britain’s broadband network.
Osborne told parliament: “We need investment in our digital infrastructure. But the previous government’s landline duty is an archaic way of achieving this, hitting 30 million households who happen to have a fixed telephone line. I am happy to be able to abolish this new duty before it is even introduced. Instead, we will support private broadband investment, including to rural areas, in part with funding from the digital switchover under-spend within the TV licence fee”.
The content industries have called on the net sector and government to ensure the roll out of faster broadband connections across the UK, to enable the wide range of new web-based video, audio, TV and radio services which are heading to market.
