Welcome:   UK taxpayers not ready

As the government is forced to admit the poor quality of broadband across the UK, HMRC services move ever-closer to being purely online:

Tunbridge Wells and Guildford are to be two of the towns which will benefit from a new roll out of superfast broadband by BT. The company have announced plans to extend the service to another 303 exchanges between Autumn 2010 and Summer 2011. It is all part of their plan to make the super fast broadband available to at least 40% of UK homes by 2012. The BT network is also being made available to other providers to allow them to offer faster speeds to their customers. BT have said they are now ahead of their schedule for the roll out which was expected to be finished by 2013.

Broadband in the UK has been celebrating its 10th birthday this week and The Mirror tracked down the first person to receive the service to see if the last ten years has been worthwhile. Mark Bush signed up to Virgin Media broadband in 2000 and is amazed at how his life has sped up since. He was part of a trial in the UK and wanted to sign up after reading about how well it worked in other countries. He explains abut how he used to wait until the old dial up was cheaper to use in the evenings and how he couldn't make phone calls while online. The main improvement has been the fact he was able to work from home, making his life as a single Dad much easier. He now has 50Mbps through Virgin Media in his home and jobs which might have taken hours in the past now take just seconds.

Broadband services were affected this week by a major flood at BT's Paddington exchange. The company said that tens of thousands of people were affected, most of which were in north and west London. The incident also caused a fire and put some mobile services out of action. The service problems also affected many Talk Talk customers. Many calls have been able to be rerouted and it is expected that things will be back to normal following the Easter break.

Ofcom has warned internet providers that they must do a better job of communicating their broadband speeds to avoid more regulation. Ofcom have completed research into the area and found that 74% of customers were not told that the maximum speed on their line was likely to be higher than that they would receive. 85% were told what the maximum speed was, but 42% of these had to be prompted to do so. Some people were also told different speeds for the same lines. Current regulations say that providers must tell people what the possible speeds were and explain any reason why that speed might be difficult to achieve. Ofcom are also considering if customers can leave a contract if the eventual speed they get is significantly less than expected.

Research commissioned by the BBC has found that 3 million homes in the UK have broadband speeds of less than 2Mbps. They found that contrary to popular belief not all these areas are rural and many are in major towns. For a home to get 2Mbps or more it must be within 4km of an exchange. Working this out can give an accurate picture of where the "notspots" in the UK are. In Basingstoke 50% of homes fall outside this distance despite recent BT plans to install superfast broadband in the area. The Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform has said that current government statistics which say that homes receiving half a megabit or more are receiving "broadband" is hopelessly out dated, considering that some countries get 100Mbps as standard.

The Tax Office has suggested that farmers get friends to fill out their tax returns online if they do not have online access or a computer. The instructions were given to the Farmers Union of Wales after they complained that some farmers were missing out. HMRC have even suggested that broadband was not necessary to fill in forms online. The FUW have said that it seems obvious the HMRC don't understand the issues the new rules have created for farmers, many of whom do not even use a computer. The new legislation does not allow for alternative methods of sending in the VAT returns. HMRC have said that dial up is sufficient and that it is secure and the customer knows they have sent it in on time as they receive a reference number. † [last update: 01.04.10]

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