06/17/2009: "Landline phone tax for us all"

The labour review is out, for every home with a fixed landline installed, there will be a new 50p per month tax (or "levy" as they prefer to call it) even if the household does not use the internet and has no plans to do so.

what a complete and utter joke!

Ł6 per year doesn't sound much does it, but for the millions of people being stung by internet service providers, (in that we pay for "an upto 8 meg download speed" internet connection but never get above 3 meg download speed) it is an insult.

For every home that pays inflated prices already for a service that is nowhere near the service they were sold, its an kick in the teeth!

For every official body/institution that fights against discrimination in the UK, you have a lot to answer for, as this "review"'s findings with discriminate against millions of customers.
- make no mistake, this will lead to more revenue and taxation income for the government, a few unemployed people will now get the internet for free, at the expense of others, and people who have no interest in getting online, will remain not online, but have to pay this new tax!

in not one single way, will british telecom be sounded out or forced to put right their appalling customer service and isp supply, neither will their now "seperate" wholesale department be held accountable.

you can read the main findings of this "review" here (BBC news)

to give one simple example of the complete lack of service provision that many thousands are paying british telecom for, this has been happening in my home for more than 3 years:
- my service is supposed to have download speeds of between 4.5 meg and 5.5 meg (due to distance from my exchange) - this is not my opinion, this is from the engineers, senior fault investigators, BT wholesale, and BT broadband sales office.
- i have not now, nor ever in 3 years, had a download speed of more than 2.7 meg
- BT acknowledge there is a fault with my service, but move me around departments (landline, broadband and wholesale) and charge me Ł100 a time if an engineer comes out and cannot find the fault! - that is of course, if he actually turns up at all, in 16 appointments, 4 times the engineer didnt turn up and then told BT wholesale/landlines/broadband that they had turned up and had done some work on the line!
- download speeds vary at different times of the day, teatime is commonly a time when i am unable to use social networking websites, sometimes my download speed is as low as 0.9 meg (which is only just above dial up speeds)

to give you an idea of "download speeds" yesterday my download speed was tested by 3 independant speed testers. download speed results were measured at 2.5 meg, 2.5 meg and 2.7 meg.
this speed would allow me to download certain files at the following speeds:
* a 5000kb song file - around 15/20 seconds from a t3 high speed server i downloaded a song - it took over 4 minutes!
* an 800mb film file - around 35/45 minutes to download from a t1 high speed server connection - i ended the download after 3 hours as less than a tenth of the file size had been downloaded, this was at 2am in the morning!

to have yet another "review" paid for by taxpayers, and then not to address the serious problems with existing services, or make no reference to them, is an insult.
to bring in a new tax on landlines for people who dont even use the internet is a disgrace!

from the bunch of cowboys running the UK, i should have expected nothing less...