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Broadband tax must stay, says Yorkshire MP

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Posted at 8:37am by

Broadband Coverage

Scrapping the new £6-a-year broadband levy could cut rural communities off from the UK's broadband network, a West Yorkshire MP has claimed.

Dewsbury member Shahid Malik has slammed the Conservative Party for vowing to scrap the 50p-a-month broadband tax, announced in the recent pre-Budget report, if it enters government at the coming general election.

According to the Huddersfield Examiner, he has promised to help improve rural broadband speeds in isolated communities across the county.

Mr Malik said the new tax was needed to help fund a new broadband service for rural villages including Birdsedge, High Flatts and Upper Cumberworth.

In addition, he said he had contacted Stephen Timms, the Minister for Digital Britain, to establish when Denby Dale, near Huddersfield, can expect to receive the funding it needs to improve broadband services.

Opponents of the new levy, including the parliamentary opposition, claim it could lead to low-income households abandoning their broadband connections altogether.

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  • Cyberdoyle, 30th December 2009.

    I would vote for any mp who took the trouble to care about rural people. 90% of the land mass is currently unable to get a decent connection over 2 meg. As that only includes 40% of the population we tend to get ignored.

    It is vital that everyone in the country has access to broadband and the only way to make it happen is to lay and light fibre. Copper can't deliver. Korea gets 1000 meg for a tenner a month. Digital Britain gets a promise of 2 meg, but if this is delivered using BET it will cost the householder in a rural area over £50 a month, because BET uses two phone lines, two rentals and BB on top.

    C'mon you rural MPs, get some true facts and join Shahid Malik in campaigning for a fair service for us. Power to the people, and get some votes.

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  • Tim Staddon, 6th January 2010.

    Sorry cyberdoyle, but I'm worried Labour is selling us a pig in a poke. Take it from someone who's trying to get a community broadband project going in Yorkshire.

    BT have no plans to do anything for rural broadband - the consultations prior to the Denby Dale report show this, and we've had that confirmed by a BT director. Virgin aren't interested, as villages are too small to justify the cost of laying the fibre.

    Since the only way either of those companies are going to kit us up with serviceable broadband, we're looking at a fixed wireless solution that is capable of serving 20mbit broadband from day one and potentially over 50mbit broadband if we get enough subscribers to pay for the pipe. The cost to set it up to serve a village with over 1000 properties, is less than £25k - a FRACTION of the cost of replacing the TPON infrastructure, and laying new cables all over the place.

    The lastest list of exchanges for FTTC, released today, further proves BT are targeting their resources at improving URBAN exchanges with the best chance of a return on investment. That includes areas where Virgin ALREADY offer high speed internet over cable.

    I'm only in favour of the tax if it is made available to community broadband projects and smaller, more flexible, innovative players like Kijoma and Rutland Telecom in the first instance. Why should a single penny of that money be handed over to BT or Virgin purely so they can compete against each other in lucrative, densely populated metropolitan areas?

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