Rory Stewart, the governments Conservative MP for Penrith (Cumbria), has revealed that the UK Treasury and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) are still debating how best to tackle the taxes on new Next Generation Access (NGA) fibre optic based broadband networks.

The news is surprising because, back in August 2010, the Minister for Communications, Culture and the Creative Industries, Ed Vaizey, scrapped an earlier pledge to review the controversial tax (here) on new fibre optic lines (Fibre Tax) and introduced new guidance instead. He did however leave the door open for more discussion.

Sadly the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) guidance, which effectively introduced a £20 tax on all homes that receive their NGA broadband from a non-BT network, did little to address the underlying imbalance. This leads to smaller ISPs paying significantly more to lay fibre optic broadband than the bigger operators like BT and Virgin Media UK.



The Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) platform, which is a government vehicle for delivering its broadband policies, is currently examining the problem and hopes to publish a clearer plan and timetable for various legislative changes within the near future.

However we have serious doubts about whether or not this will include a more common sense approach to the ever controversial Fibre Tax. Ed Vaizey, despite appearing to have a good grasp of the problems pre-election, is unlikely to do a u-turn on the change he has already made. We can only hope that the weeks since August have proven more educational for our often technologically ignorant political leaders.