50p broadband tax

The big 'rabbit in the hat' of the measures announced in the Digital Britain report this afternoon is the proposal to charge a 50p per month (£6 per year) levy on all fixed line telephony lines (so, both BT and Virgin Media) with the funds to be paid into a central pot that would be used to fund the rollout of next generation broadband networks.

Report author Lord Carter doesn't believe it will push up prices though, with the cost to be offset by the continued reduction in costs driven by competition in the telephony market. He said:

"It is a contribution which we are asking people to make - it's six pounds a year - offset, as we make very clear in the report, by the likely continued reduction in headline prices because of the competitive market we have in this country."

Believe that if you will. SamKnows spokesman Alex Salter doubts that it will cover the costs of delivering next generation broadband to the non urban areas though:

"It answers the main question from the last report which was who is going to pay. This is less expensive per capita than similar schemes, for example in Australia, but is unlikely to generate the full budget required - this will still have to come from the providers."

The report has also called for a minimum service obligation of 2Mb broadband service to each home in the UK by 2012 (which will be funded with surplus monies from the licence fee that aren't spent on the digital switchover) and proposed measures for combating piracy online, as has been widely expected.

The government will give powers to Ofcom to put in place a system for repeat offenders that is known as "write and sue", and they will also work with the ISPs on technical measures against the problem - which is a eminently sensible response given the lack of scaleable technical solutions for such incredibly complex requirements - which is naturally not something that the people at the BPI agree with.

As the "write and sue" name suggests, ISPs will be required to work with Ofcom under the terms of a Code of Practice to write to those infringing copyright, followed by a court process of the release of identity information and civil action if users do not desist. The interesting part is the technical measures that may happen if this is still not effective. From the report:

"The Government will also provide for backstop powers for Ofcom to place additional conditions on ISPs aimed at reducing or preventing online copyright infringement by the application of various technical measures. In order to provide greater certainty for the development of commercial agreements, the Government proposes to specify in the legislation what these further measures might be; namely:

* Blocking (Site, IP, URL)
* Protocol blocking
* Port blocking
* Bandwidth capping (capping the speed of a subscriber’s Internet connection and/or capping the volume of data traffic which a subscriber can access);
* Bandwidth shaping (limiting the speed of a subscriber’s access to selected protocols/services and/or capping the volume of data to selected protocols/services);
* Content identification and filtering– or a combination of these measures."

And that's where things start to get incredibly complex and costly - although no doubt there are plenty of DPI vendors who won't complain if the need to undertake these measures is enshrined in law.

The full report can be read here [PDF], and more thoughts will follow as it is further digested no doubt.