In 1696, King William III of England imposed a tax on glass. Essentially, houses with more than ten windows paid a levy to the government, but the tax is now remembered as unfair and very avoidable by bricking up the windows in your home. Today there is a new tax on glass – firms who light the glass in fibre optic cable pay the government a levy based on the length of the fibre. Again the tax is desperately unfair, and very avoidable because firms can just not roll out services on fibre.

When firms avoid fibre, it hurts us all.  When fibre is cheap, firms can use it to roll out super-fast broadband to their users, using the sort of technology that facilitates connections tens or hundreds of times faster than a typical UK home enjoys.  It also allows service providers to increase the capacity of their network edge, and to improve the robustness of their network – for instance by building more links between their network points.  Improved robustness also means better business continuity planning options, improving the availability of their services.  This tax kills faster access, and better services.

The fibre tax also worsens the conditions for international networks looking to build into the UK, for instance in order to bring their content and services to the UK market .  This is not a hypothetical risk, it is a game-changer that has destroyed the business cases of several projects that we have been contributed to last year.

This morning, George Osborne was on BBC TV explaining that he saw an advancement in next-gen broadband (based on fibre optic cabling) as a priority. If this is the case, then he must commit to repealing the 21st Century Window Tax. To date, they have only considered repealing the 50p per month tax on telephone lines that has been suggested by the hugely flawed Digital Britain study.

We are just not competitive with this tax.