New tax for landline owners

Date: 17th June 2009

A new tax is to be introduced by the government for all owners of a landline telephone, it has been revealed.

The new tax, which amounts to £6 per year, was announced yesterday (June 16th) and will be used to help bring super-fast two megabits per second broadband to every home in the UK by 2012.

Critics have suggested everybody might not want broadband and that the 50p per month levy is unfair, while supporters hail broadband as an essential component of modern day Britain.

However, Gordon Brown said yesterday that a fast internet connection was "an essential service as indispensible as electricity, gas and water."

The Conservative party has suggested that even with the £6 yearly tax, funding for super-fast broadband will fall short of the necessary figures by £2.5 billion.

News of the broadband tax came as part of Lord Carter's Digital Britain report into the future of the country's digital technology, such as radio, television and the internet.

The £6-a-year tax is proposed to continue until 2017.