Tag Archives: taxes
Applications now open for LIRNEasia Young Scholar Tutorials, hosted by NUS, Singapore. Click here for info on how to apply.
Britain to tax fixed lines 6 pounds a year for broadband: expect more mobile-only households
To many people’s surprise, the UK has decided to tax every fixed line 6 pounds a year to build “next generation broadband” throughout the country.
But Virgin’s network is limited and fibre-optic cables are expensive. The two firms can profitably reach only around two-thirds of the population, reckons Matt Yardley of Analysys Mason, a consultancy that helped to prepare the report. Connecting the rest at high speed will cost around £3 billion. So Lord Carter surprised the broadband industry by proposing a £6 annual tax on telephone lines, raising around £150m. That will be used to bring “next generation broadband” (a term left undefined, but probably an expansion of the BT scheme) by 2017 to the third of the country the private sector will struggle to reach.
We sincerely hope this money will be spent as soon as its collected and will not add to the billions of universal service funds rotting in government accounts the world over. We also predict that there will be more mobile-only households as a result. Trust the British to go against the current. Everyone else beats up on mobile and shields fixed; they do the opposite.
Sri Lanka: Telecom’s contribution to economic growth and the impact of taxes
Government has released the 2008 second quarter economic performance data, which shows, again, that the telecom sector is growing the fastest, at 23.2 per cent (as against 21 per cent, 2007 Q2), followed by mining and quarrying at 19.6 per cent.
In his weekly newspaper column in the Lankadeepa, Mr Udaya Gammanpila, the Chairman of the Central Environmental Authority and the main proponent of mobile-specific taxes, has posed the question to me why the mobile sector keeps growing even as they keep loading taxes on it. For example, the mobile subscriber levy of 10 percent of every bill was in effect in 2008 Q2. Possibly, the 10 per cent levy on CDMA “fixed” phones was also in effect for at least part of 2008 Q2. Yet, mobile connections grew by 43.5 per cent and fixed (primarily CDMA) by 42 per cent.
In one of my first columns on the subject of mobile-specific taxes, in September 2007, a year ago, I talked about the goose that lays the golden eggs:
“According to the fable, the regular supply of golden eggs was not enough for the foolish owners; blinded by greed, they cut open the goose to get all the eggs at once. ..read more
Connecting the unconnected and more at ITU Telecom Asia 2008
I had the opportunity of chairing a panel of seven persons from various parts of Asia at the Forum at ITU Telecom Asia 2008 in Bangkok. After we got around the inane title of Manga for the masses, we had a decent discussion, focussing on the aspects of connecting the unconnected, assuring adequate quality to the connected, and content. My overview slides setting the frame are here.
Contrary to expectation, the Chairman of the Bangladesh Telecom Regulatory Commission, representing perhaps one of the least connected of the countries of Asia, talked about using universal service funds to develop content. Several people referred to the counter-productive nature of universal service taxes, wherein poor people were being taxed to provide services to poor people, yet those taxes were not being utilized, wisely or otherwise. I personally was relieved to hear that the Bangladesh universal service fund is still under consideration, and not a done deal.
On the subject of taxes, we had an interesting intervention from the floor, when Professor Howard Williams, the Acting Head of ITU Telecom Forum, intervened from the floor in defense of taxes being imposed on the telecom sector. One assumes that he was working ..read more
Recent Comments