Lord Carter Defends Broadband Levy Proposal

The plan to impose a GBP6 yearly tax on all phone lines in the country intented to raise a fund of 1.5 billion to pay for the next generations super fast broadband networks was defended by Lord Carter last day. In an interview with the Media Guardian, the communications minister came back hard on the critics in the film, music and television industry, who had reproached him for his failure in introducing tough steps to control illegal file sharing, immediately.

Last weeks report of Digital Britain carried Lord Carter’s plan to raise 50p a month from every household and business firms with a phone connection to fund the next generation optic fibre network to around 90 percent of the population by 2017. With this technological advancement, people can download movies in a minute, and music in a matter of seconds.

The government’s adviser for broadband comparison, Fransesco Caio, who was also the former boss of Cable & Wireless had commented an year ago that public money was not necessary for the completion of the plan. This point is what that has been capitalised by the critics of the tax proposal, mainly the Tories. They put forth the argument that tax proposal was unfair as well as irrelevant to the situation.

Meanwhile, the communication minister said that two companies; BT and Virgin Media were ready to invest money for the next generation network and they have already reached out to 60 percent of the population. He added that things had considerably changed since Caio made that particular comment, and if the country wanted a new infrastructure it was not to be paid by the market. He concluded saying that we had to pay for it if we wanted it.