The government has published its Digital Britain report, which aims to overhaul the telecommunications and media landscape. One prominent feature of communications minister Lord Carter’s proposals was a £6 annual tax on telephone lines. This will fund broadband access and faster download speeds for the whole country, given the high cost of extending fast broadband to rural areas has discouraged telecoms groups from doing so. Another idea is to “top-slice” the BBC’s licence fee. A small portion of this would be set aside to fund public service programmes at other broadcasters who have recently been hit by dwindling advertising revenues.
What the commentators said
Since Carter was given a “rambling and inchoate brief”, it’s not surprising that he has delivered little of substance on “any front”, said The Daily Telegraph. The hope is that every home in Britain will have broadband with a speed of at least two megabits per second (mbps) by 2012. But this just serves to highlight how far ahead our rivals are. In Japan, the average download speed is 90mbps. “We are paying a heavy price for the failure to invest in fibre-optic cabling during the economic boom.”
Meanwhile, giving some of the BBC’s licence fee to other terrestrial broadcasters “opens up a host of potential claims on BBC funds”, said The Times. Shouldn’t newspapers be subsidised too? Indeed, instead of tackling the key issue, the “size, role, and regulation” of the BBC, the report merely proposes expanding “the cake of public funding for the media” and dividing it more widely. That will deter entrepreneurs in this field and stifle innovation. Lord Carter has let digital Britain “slip through his fingers”.