For those of us campaigning to rid the world and the UK in particular of all hard wired copper and fiber optic cable use for communications and replace it with the totally wireless universe the proposed 50p telephone landline tax comes as an astounding irony. As part of a bill to parliament labeled the digital Britain implementation plan, this tax will reportedly generate revenue that will be used to develop technologies improving Britain’s information carrying network.
 
A problem seems to be that the 120,000,000 pounds this tax would generate is simply not a lot of money especially when placed in the hands of government coffers with a history of pound foolishness.
 
Those same funds used by corporate structure might provide an IT improvement but the filter down process of government is not likely to produce similar results. A positive note of possibility is that these funds are to be earmarked for local broadband improvement.
 
Perhaps if a sufficient portion of these tax revenues could find their way to local governments we could well see large scale networks of shared broadband WiFi such as those used in downtown Bristol available in smaller cities throughout the United Kingdom.