Chancellor Alistair Darling has revealed that the government’s plan to add an extra £6 to landline bills to cover broadband improvements will go ahead. The Broadband tax is a yearly contribution to help fund a new, faster broadband network.

It’s all to do with the Digital Britain plan; the poll tax will be used to extend current networks to remote areas in the UK, creating a super fast broadband across the country. It’s estimated the move will raise around £175million annually, which will be up for grabs if a firm is willing to spend the money to help increase network reach.

Although Bt has pledged £1.5 billion to provide fibre optic cables to 10 million homes by 2012, and Virgin has already provided it’s own cable network that spreads across more than half of UK households, neither company have been keen to invest anymore into the project.

“we now want to go further, so we can provide the next generation of super fast broadband to 90% of the population before the end of 2017”, explained Darling this will be funded through a duty of 50 pence a month on landlines which will be included in the finance bill”

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