Thetownend.com

50p per month, expected to come in just before the next election. Enough said.  :wtf:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8270772.stm

A whole £6 per year. Revolt!

It will be £150 in a few years though.

Correct...its there starter for ten.

Well, no doubt that solves our economic woes, a £6 a year tax.

Cant Pay Wont Pay!

Its alot of money Nemo...most households have it now...thats alot of six Squids.

It's not a tax on broadband, it's a tax on fixed phone lines to help pay for broadband in areas that don't have it.

Complete and utter bollocks if you ask me. I live in a town and already have broadband, why should I have to pay so those that live in rural / remote areas can get it? If they want it they can either move somewhere more practical or pay for it themselves.

Not going to affect me though, if it happens I'll just get rid of my home phone line - I only use it once in a blue moon for outgoing calls to 0845 numbers. I imagine a lot of people will do the same.

Considering the interest on our massive national debt alone is predicted in the Government's own figures to be £60bn a year by 2014, we're going to need a whole lot more six Squids. About 10 billion of them actually, I'm guessing that's slightly more than the number of UK households. This is pissing in the wind.

some of us like living in the countryside. fuck, i don't even live somewhere that remote.

but it's ok cos your taxes pay for me to do fuck all and get paid for it :-)

I'm all for it. I've never had a house phone :D

I think that the internet is important enough now to help out more isolated areas in getting it. It's important that when the freemarket model breaks down that the government makes sure that the individuals left behind on important services are still provided for.

I give up.................actually I gave up a long time ago  :)

They already have broadband, this is all about getting them up to a minimum 2Mbs connection - so its not like they're going without the internet, it will just be a bit slow.

I think a 2Mbs (at least) should be provided nationwide by the government. If you want faster then you can pay one of the private companies. Combine that with a government sponsored laptop providing service would be brilliant.

If you're a freelancer who relies on the Internet for sourcing work, communicating with clients and doing research, I presume it will go down as an expense? 

linkage?

Oh god no.

Given this Government's record of fuck-ups with implement IT systems, and the previous experience of telecommunications before it was privatised - i.e. waiting months for a line, party lines and waiting weeks just for a piece of shit bakelite phone, any Government should never be allowed anywhere near anything technological.

You can make the same argument for rural roads/water supplies etc. And conversely, rural dwellers could object as to why they should pay more tax for the urban scum to get patched up after stabbing each other (NHS), burgling each other (Police) etc. The argument is that broadband is now as much a part of our national communications infrastructure as roads, telephones, TV etc and so if we as a nation want to have a decent comms infrastucture, then some serious investment needs to be made in laying down the foundations for that, so we can all benefit from it.

I may be wrong, but I don't think the phoneline tax is being introduced in order to rid us of our national debt