Digital Britain – The Hits And Misses

Ok, we take it all back. Yesterday it looked like the Digital Britain paper would just lamely hope that the private sector would want to invest its own money in a fibre-optic network; the leaks suggested a few tax breaks. The reality is all-out taxation, of 50p per month for those consumers and businesses with copper phone lines that can be replaced with fibre optic cabling. It’ll annoy the blue-rinse brigade who have said they don’t want t’internet; for the rest of us its a reassuringly sure-fire way of making the UK a better place to do business in.

While the new superfast networks will only cover towns and cities, in tandem with the universal 2Mb broadband this is starting to look like a properly Digital Britain. The 50p tax is set to bring in £150m-£175m a year, for which BT and Virgin will bid to pay for extending their networks. We can expect some noisy opposition to it – comments sections from the Mail to the Guardian are ringing with the wonky arguments that only comments sections allow – but the reality is that the vast majority of Britons, and all British business, recognises the need for fast broadband.

The paper has prompted another high-profile appointee to the public sector in the form of Martha Lane-Fox, the founder of lastminute.com. She’s been tasked with helping those struggling to get online – grants will be given to schoolchildren whose parents can’t afford internet bills, starting later this year. How these taxes and grants will fare under a potential Tory government is uncertain – they’ve scored some political points, unsurprisingly, by attacking the plans as unnecessary taxation, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Cameron, with his love for all things new media, secretly agrees with the proposals… 

After this point, the paper gets rather less certain. It’s top-slicing of the licence fee is contingent upon consultation over the next few months – expect vociferous lobbying from the BBC, who have totally rejected the proposals. The opposition to the top-slicing potentially jeopardises another part of the paper, the proposed partial merger of Channel 4 and BBC Worldwide, that would bring much-needed extra revenue to 4. Dawn Airey, head of Channel 5 who were also angling for a Channel 4 merger, predictably attacked the proposal: “We fail to see why our proposal which offered financial security and enhanced PSB was rejected out of hand. Instead, a political fudge is being proposed”. 

Even more uncertain is the fight against internet piracy. The paper’s recommendations – that ISPs reduce piracy by 70% – are also subject to consultation, and people on all sides, from the ISPs to content producers to copyright holders, are unhappy with one or another aspect of them. The various consultations means that the 70% rule might not come in for three years, and the various punishments – letters, bandwidth throttling – seem like pretty light slaps on the wrist. Lets face it – the number of illegal downloaders adds up to a lot of votes, tech-savvy votes who favour will have been curried with the fibre-optic news. Labour doesn’t want to piss them off.

So a report then that’s contingent on ongoing consultation and the whims of the next government. It’s nevertheless encouraging to see that, in the politically risky taxation of broadband, we have a government who is more devoted than ever before to dragging Britain into line with the rest of the world when it comes to a nationwide infrastructure.

Posted by Ben Beaumont-Thomas in Sci-tech | June 17, 2009 11:21AM |