The governments Minister for Communications, Culture and the Creative Industries, Ed Vaizey, has finally set a date for when he will meet with UK ISPs to discuss the Valuation Office Agency's (VOA) controversial fibre optic broadband tax (Fibre Tax). This essentially taxes the rateable value of the basic infrastructure and unfairly charges smaller providers significantly more than larger ones (e.g. BT).

This situation is often blamed for stifling the development of new "super-fast" fibre optic broadband services, especially in rural areas, by effectively making it economically unviable for anybody except BT (taxed on its profits and not the new fibre itself) and Virgin Media to do the work.

Vaizey further shocked the industry during August 2010 when he scrapped an earlier pledge to review the tax (here) and instead introduced new guidance. However, rather than boosting smaller scale projects, the changes actually increased some of their costs.

Since then there have been a few positive signs. The government has been encouraging smaller operators to make their case and send any evidence directly to the VOA. It has also agreed to meet with ISPs and discuss the problem, but until now that hasn't happened.

Unfortunately the meeting itself, which will be held on 2nd December 2010 at the Department of Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) in Westminster (11am), may not prove terribly fruitful. According to Computer Weekly, many smaller operators have not received invites and BT has also been left out. Likewise the meeting is not for "decision-making" and will merely allow ISPs to vent some steam, although we hope it's more constructive than that.

Meeting Participants
Digital Region
Easynet
i3 Group
Gamma Telecom
Geo
NYNet
Rutland Telecommunications
Sohonet
TalkTalk
Virgin Media
The Broadband Stakeholders Group
Ofcom

Sadly Fibrestream (NextGenUs) and Vtesse Networks ( Vtesse Broadband ) appear to have been left off the invite list, which is shocking because they have by far some of the best understanding; especially in terms of rural deployments.

Needless to say that correcting this imbalance could easily lead to a significant uptick in super-fast fibre optic broadband infrastructure building around the UK. However the government has so far appeared unwilling to make any significant changes, which does not bode well for the future.