Thread: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
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Old 22-06-2009, 20:42   #18
brundles
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Re: 50p phone levey - not on Virgin phones ?
Quote:
Originally Posted by *sloman* View Post
Having a fixed line improves your credit worthy-ness with most banks
Where do you get that from? VOIP combined with the joys of number porting mean that providing a fixed line number (as I have on a VOIP only system at home) is no guarantee you're even based in the country, never mind stable.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
I think you guess wrongly. The idea of a levy like this is to ensure a minimum level of service is available to everyone, regardless of the current availability of the service or how they currently use it. Providing that service is expensive - so expensive that it is not practical to force only those whose line needs upgrade work to pay for it. In the same way as everyone pays for schools, hospitals, roads and the BBC through a variety of taxes, licences and levies, regardless of whether they use those services or not, everyone will shoulder the cost of Britain's broadband upgrades.

edit

Look at it another way: if you were exempt because you're already on a super-fast cable network, wouldn't all those who already have fast ADSL also be exempt?
I agree with the theory that it needs to be spread across the board to achieve it, but doing it and suggesting that companies should swallow the cost in competitive deals is a bit much. That is basically suggesting that Virgin should pony up a load of cash to support their competitors inferior network.

At the risk of opening another rather large can of worms, it becomes a bit like the TV license - only (currently) the BBC gets anything from it but you can't use any other channels without paying for it.

I'd almost rather they were honest about it, did it as a tax or charge similar to the TV license and kept it away from the ISPs having to deal with it. Applying it as a levy against fixed lines makes things easy for the government and (in general) shifts the cost of administering the whole lot on to the ISPs.

Hmm - the more I think about this the more I think VM are getting the short end of the stick here. VM absorbs tax cost to remain competitive, BT get faster super duper network, BT charge VM higher rates for the privilege of running Virgin.net ADSL over new super duper network...
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