digital britan

1. Landline users to pay £6 broadband tax
· Fixed-line telephone users will pay £6 a year to fund the rollout of superfast broadband across the country.
· The government wants everyone to be able to receive broadband of at least 2Mbps by 2012.
· The reason for having a £6 tax of all broadband users is to get between £150m and £175m a year to extend ‘next-generation’ of broadband to the "final third" of the country that will not be reached by the market.
· A "small part" of the licence fee digital switchover surplus would fund three ITV regional news pilots in Scotland, Wales and one English region between now and 2013.
· The government has confirmed that it will use part of the BBC licence fee to fund ITV regional news services.

2. Digital Britain: ISPs will have to cut filesharing by 70% under new proposals
· British ISPs will be required to cut illegal filesharing on their networks by 70% within a year under new powers set to be given to the communications regulator Ofcom.
· The government will empower Ofcom to demand that ISPs collect data about alleged infringers of online rights – by downloading or uploading content without permission.
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3. The internet reacts to Digital Britain
Reaction on Twitter and blogs was fast and furious, quite literally, in some instances to the proposals coming out of the Digital Britain report