A proposal has been put forward that’d see households charged an £11-a-month “Home Internet Levy” as a new way to fund the BBC.
Olilo’s position doesn't need a consultation, a focus group, or some sanitised corporate press release.
To make it crystal clear: absolutely fucking not.
We oppose this idea completely. We oppose the principle behind it, we oppose turning broadband bills into a collection bucket for totally unrelated services, and we oppose turning internet providers into tax collectors just because nearly every home in the country needs a connection.
If this idea goes anywhere, Olilo will fight it.
And whatever happens with the proposal, we want our customers to know one thing right now: we won't build this charge into the price of any Olilo products, and we won't pass it on to you.
Broadband isn't a TV subscription
Broadband's essential infrastructure.
It's how people work, run businesses, study, sort their banking, talk to family, use public services, and just get on with life. For millions of households, having an internet connection isn't optional anymore.
That should make policymakers a lot more careful about hiking the cost of staying connected, not less.
Instead, this proposal treats the fact that broadband's everywhere as an opportunity. Almost everybody has a broadband bill, so suddenly that bill looks like a handy place to grab some cash.
We fundamentally reject that logic.
Needing internet access doesn't magically make someone a BBC customer, and buying broadband from an ISP shouldn't land you with an obligation to fund a broadcaster. The two things have nothing to do with each other.
Call it what you want. We call it theft dressed up as policy.
The polite label being thrown around is a “Home Internet Levy”.
Call it a levy. Call it a contribution. Call it reform. Call it a modernised funding mechanism.
We call it theft dressed up as policy.
That's our take on the proposal and the thinking behind it. We aren't saying someone's committed a criminal offence. We're saying that taking extra money off someone simply because they need to get online, then handing that cash to an unrelated broadcaster, is completely unacceptable.
When you buy broadband from Olilo, you're paying us to provide broadband.
That money pays for network capacity, transit, peering, kit, engineering, support, and everything else needed to keep a proper connection running.
That's the deal. The BBC isn't part of it.
Olilo won't pass this charge on to customers
There shouldn't be any confusion about where we stand here:
- We won't build a BBC levy into the price of any Olilo package.
- We won't slap £11 onto our broadband tariffs.
- We won't hide it inside another fee.
- We won't invent an “admin fee” to claw it back.
- We won't quietly jack up prices and pretend nothing happened.
- We won't rename it, bundle it, or disguise it as the cost of running a network.
If an £11 levy gets proposed, you won't suddenly see £11 added to your Olilo bill. Even if this ends up written into law, our position doesn't change: we won't pass it on.
If they try to force providers into running a scheme like this, we'll fight it every way we can. We'd much rather spend money fighting the policy than just shrug our shoulders and pass someone else's bill over to you.
This is about a lot more than £11
The amount matters, but the precedent's way worse.
Once broadband bills become fair game for collecting money that's got nothing to do with the internet, where does it stop?
The whole argument here is basically: broadband's a convenient collection tool because nearly everyone has it. You can use that exact same excuse again and again:
- Another public body runs out of money.
- Another pet project needs funding.
- Another policy gets deemed important enough to stick on a levy.
Suddenly an ISP isn't just delivering broadband anymore. It's turned into a general debt collector for government policy.
We've got zero interest in going down that road.
Customers have enough trouble making sense of broadband pricing in this industry without random mandatory charges getting tacked on. If Olilo tells you your broadband is £42 a month, £42 should mean £42 for your broadband. Not £42 plus this levy, plus that levy, plus whatever else someone decides ISPs should collect because it's easy.
Pushing back against that exact rubbish is why Olilo's here in the first place.
This isn't about whether you like the BBC
People will inevitably try to make this about the BBC itself.
It isn't.
You can love the BBC. You can hate it. You can watch it every evening, listen to the radio all day, and keep the news app glued to your screen. Or you can never touch it at all.
That's a completely different conversation.
There's a fair debate to be had about the future of public-service broadcasting and how it ought to be paid for. Have that debate. But have it honestly.
- If the Government thinks public broadcasting should be funded through general taxation, put taxation on the table and defend it.
- If it thinks a subscription model or something else works better, put that forward and defend it.
What it shouldn't do is take a utility millions of people depend on for completely different reasons, and use that bill to quietly tuck away the collection mechanism.
Don't hide your bill inside ours.
If this moves forward, we'll fight it
This isn't Olilo posting an angry blog today and forgetting all about it next Tuesday.
If this idea turns into actual policy, we're going to fight it. We'll make our stance loud and clear to policymakers, submit our objections to consultations, bring it to regulators, and team up with any other providers who're ready to push back.
And if there's a solid legal route to challenge attempts to force ISPs into acting as collectors, we're prepared to take it to court.
We're totally serious about that.
Plenty of companies say they're against something, only to grumble for a few weeks and then quietly roll it out anyway. That's not what we're doing. Tacking unrelated public charges onto broadband connections is flat-out wrong, it sets a terrible precedent, and providers need to stand up and say so right now before it becomes the norm.
Our bill's for broadband.
Olilo started with a pretty straightforward idea: broadband should be better. It should be technically brilliant, completely transparent, and simple. You ought to know what you're buying, what you're paying, and what you're actually getting, without having to dig through three pages of small print to figure out why your bill doesn't match the advertised price.
We aren't going to be a tax collector, a licence-fee enforcer, or a middleman for somebody else's balance sheet.
You pay us for an internet connection. We like that setup just fine.
So, one last time, because apparently it needs saying:
Absolutely fucking not. Hands off our broadband.
Broadband still without the BS
