Tax Policy to Encourage BB Takeup

spongebob

An article on Silicon Republic Here indicates that the department of Finance is leaning favourably towards the incentivisation of BB rollouts through the Tax system. Yours truly has long advocated this mechanism.

"In addition, it is believed that the move towards exempting BIK among teleworkers in the Finance Bill will lead to eventual full tax credits for businesspeople and consumers who adopt broadband in order to drive up demand and encourage roll-out. If the BIK exemption is introduced as early as the next budget, it won’t be unlikely that in subsequent budgets the move could evolve to include tax credits for citizens as well as raising the BIK exemption bar for adopters of more advanced technologies and even faster connection services."

More good news. Eircoms base package will be excluded from the Tax exepmtion system as it is a sub 512k product .....RADSL is an 'up to' 512k package not a guaranteed 512k package.

"However, it is believed that a report on broadband that is about to be published over the next fortnight by the Oireachtas sub-Committee on Communications and IT has called for the bar to be raised higher for high-speed connections, recognising that anything below 512kb per second is not broadband."

Good stuff

M

Ripwave

Unfortunately, some of the comments ascribed to Simon Coveney don't exactly inspire confidence that he knows what he's talking about:

It is no secret that we have concluded that anything less than 512 kilobytes is not broadband, and that 124 kilobytes to 256 kilobytes is DSL, with anything below that being ISDN or else analog. We need to constantly raise the bar in terms of broadband capacity. ... We should not be disadvantaging companies who provide employees with DSL links to their households, but we should try to grade it to encourage companies to provide a broadband link-up to their employees’ houses, rather than an ISDN or DSL link.

Raskolnikov

Originally posted by Ripwave
Unfortunately, some of the comments ascribed to Simon Coveney don't exactly inspire confidence that he knows what he's talking about:

Do you know where there's a hardcopy of that statment?

SkepticOne

Unfortunately not enough has been done to stimulate competition for this to work in a way that benefits consumers. Without competition, Eircom are placed to take the lion's share of this public money and use it to further grow their monopoly or ship it back to their owners.

The proposals in that article seem to be a de-facto acceptance of Eircom's monopoly.

Whatever money they are planning to forgo in tax revenue should instead be used in developing vendor neutral fibre infrastructure. This would allow competition in the last mile which would bring down prices. It would be in the interest of these competitors to implement up-to-date technology in order to increase speads and lower costs in order to retain customers.

Tax breaks would temporarily bring down the price of Eircom's DSL, but eventually they will raise it just like they did with the line rental. More importantly, they would have little incentive to increase the capabilities and speeds of their products since they currently have no fear of losing out to the competition.

Bad move, imo. Sorry to disagree with Muck here.

De Rebel

Originally posted by Ripwave
Unfortunately, some of the comments ascribed to Simon Coveney don't exactly inspire confidence that he knows what he's talking about:

Cribwave, do you ever give up. The guy is a farmer and a politician. So he f***s up on one or two technical terms and proves to have a less than perfect knowledge. Big bloody deal.

He has proved interested in the subject, a good listener and willing to raise the issue when the opportunity arises. Like many other politicians, for whom it would be much easier to shy away from technical subjects, he has gathered a basic knowledge of broadband and internet availability, got to grips with the kernel of the issues for "ireland inc." and proven himself willing to speak up. (Noel O'Flynn is another example of a politician who might not be the most technologically literate, and yet has got to a point where he has been heard to say "I'm passionate about broadband")

Rather than cheap digs, if you feel you can contribute why not offer them the benefit of your perfect knowledge.

Fallschirmjager

Well i would agree...complaining about their knowledge has so many people scared about venturing into the arena for fear of appearing foolish.

to be honest, if they just said ...look i want the fastest bb connection and we are not talking about minimun entry levels...' that would suit me.

the reason we have so many zombie looks is when people hear K and adsl and all the other ****e..they just switch off. I honestly believe we need to give cast iron easy to understand examples of why speed is the key.

you know like...if you attach a cheap camera you can have a videophone permanently connected to your friends and make phone calls internationally but still only play your BB charge per month...


lets stay away from protocols and 124K...

just an opinion tho....

Ripwave

Originally posted by De Rebel
Cribwave, do you ever give up.

God, you Cork people are so friggin sensitive.

Look, the guy is quoted making statements that, if correct, would raise questions about any stance he might take on the issue. Look where Mary O'Rourkes "passion for broadband" left us!

As it happens, yes, I have been in touch with him about it, and he is concerned that he was misquoted. He wasn't aware that RADSL is an "up to 512" service, and his main concern is that, by the time 512k is widely deployed, we'll find we have to start all over again, because that we'll have fallen behind the pack. I disagree with him that this should be a major concern - I think it's far more important to get "up to 512k" connections 6 or 8 km from the exchange at this point, rather than encouraging 2M connections, which will only be delivered within 1.5km of the exchange.

I think, if we are going to spend tax money in this way, it should be focussed on LLU and alternative last mile technologies, which is the only way to drive real technological competition, and not allow any tax incentives for retail deployment of "wholesale" products, where there won't be any tecnology competition.

"Price competition" can be self defeating in this arena, because it can actually militate against the introduction of newer, more costly technologies. By focussing on ways to encourage technology competition, we should end up with lower prices as a by-product.

spongebob

Originally posted by Ripwave
I think, if we are going to spend tax money in this way, it should be focussed on LLU and alternative last mile technologies, which is the only way to drive real technological competition, and not allow any tax incentives for retail deployment of "wholesale" products, where there won't be any tecnology competition.

God, I agree with Ripwave . You should do more of the vision thing head !

M

De Rebel

Originally posted by Ripwave
God, you Cork people are so friggin sensitive.

Look, the guy is quoted making statements that, if correct, would raise questions about any stance he might take on the issue. Look where Mary O'Rourkes "passion for broadband" left us!

As it happens, yes, I have been in touch with him about it, and he is concerned that he was misquoted. He wasn't aware that RADSL is an "up to 512" service, and his main concern is that, by the time 512k is widely deployed, we'll find we have to start all over again, because that we'll have fallen behind the pack. I disagree with him that this should be a major concern - I think it's far more important to get "up to 512k" connections 6 or 8 km from the exchange at this point, rather than encouraging 2M connections, which will only be delivered within 1.5km of the exchange.

I think, if we are going to spend tax money in this way, it should be focussed on LLU and alternative last mile technologies, which is the only way to drive real technological competition, and not allow any tax incentives for retail deployment of "wholesale" products, where there won't be any tecnology competition.

"Price competition" can be self defeating in this arena, because it can actually militate against the introduction of newer, more costly technologies. By focussing on ways to encourage technology competition, we should end up with lower prices as a by-product.

Thats a lot more constructive than your original post. Sorry I had to drag it out of you.