KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
Update: And just like that, the government has relented. After pressure from the press and public, it's now announced that while the tax will still be implemented, there will be a cap on it. For individuals, no one will have to pay more than 700 forints (£1.8), while businesses will have a maximum monthly charge of 5,000 forints (£13).
The Fidesz parliamentary group has also urged the government to make sure that this extension of the telecom tax it not passed along to internet subscribers in any form.
Original Story: Accessing the internet in Hungary looks like it's going to get a lot more expensive as of next year, as Hungarian economy minister Mihály Varga has announced that a new tax, set to come into force in 2015, will begin charging Internet Service Providers (ISPs) by the gigabyte. While that might not be the end of the world if the fee was small, the quoted per gigabyte rate is 150 forints, which works out at around 38 pence per GB.
This is all part of the “telecom tax,” which has previously been levied against companies that provide telephone calls in the country. However now it's being extended to ISPs too, forcing them to pay for the bandwidth that their customers use. To put it into context, for every customer that downloaded the recently released, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, the ISP would have to pay almost £20. Clearly, that isn't a fee that the ISPs are going to absorb willingly.
Mihály Varga. Source: Wikimedia
Instead, what is likely to happen if there is no way for the industry to counter this legislative change, the costs will be passed on to the consumer, either in the form of massively reduced bandwidth packages, or with a per-gigabyte charge that will make doing anything beyond basic gaming and webpage viewing an expensive practice.
As Portfolio points out however, this is where the law falls flat on its face. The government has previously announced new measures to try and get high speed internet to every home in the country, but if nobody can afford to use it then it seems somewhat redundant.
The Hungarian government hopes to raise 20 billion florins (£5 billion) from the new tax.
Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.
KitGuru Says: Do any of our Hungarian readers know anything more about this? If you contact your ISP to find out what they have to say, forward us their response as we'd love to know how they plan to react to it. [Thanks Berti Kato for the tip]
That is a Scary thought I hope that is never comes to the uk
If i were a hungarian, i would start drawing up pickets right about…. now.
Seriously though, the energy to produce and distribute one GB of information is so low that charging a sum like that for it is pretty much the textbook example of robbery.
Viktor Orbán and his Fidez party is anti democratic and corrupted like hell. In April, the party won a second term with just 45 percent of the vote, yet a set of Fidesz-friendly changes to the election laws enacted by Orbán during his first term as prime minister transformed this plurality into a two-thirds parliamentary mandate.
Mr Orban outlined his longer-term vision in a much-noted speech on July 26th in Baile Tusnade, in neighbouring Romania. Hungary, he explained, would become an “illiberal state”. Speaking admiringly of Russia, China and Turkey, he said Hungary would remain a democracy, and not reject liberal principles such as freedom of speech, but would be based on “a different, special, national approach”.
So curbing the free speech and take control of internet is no surprise.
I see the political party that is in the government in Hungary taking a nose dive in the next polls. Especially in ages between 18 to 25.
That’s a guaranteed way to lose an election. Anyone who offers the removal of this abomination wins.
In Greece you can become a government with much less than 45%. I don’t really remember now, but I think a 35-37% is enough if the second is more than 5-6% behind the first. Election after election the percentage needed to have 50% of the seats in parliament, moves lower here and you can expect to see the same thing in your country if your politicians safer the same brain damage and are as corrupted as our own.
If i were hungarian I would move to Romania. Here we have 1Gbit uplink for only 13euro/month and it is not crippled by any ISP when downloading/uploading. Our government is corrupted too, but at least they don’t mess with out internet because they are afraid we gonna do another revolution like in 1989.
Hell, normally I don’t bother with protests, I support them (when they’re needed) but don’t join them
If this came to the UK, I’d go to London and protest.
I mean, fuck, 35P per GB?!? That will cripple the tech industry there. IT companies would just shut up shop and move out.
I really hope the people of Hungary resist this.
I wish that could be true – but the only party that Fidez party sees as a threat is Jobbik – an extreme right party that is notoriously anti-jew. But while Jobbik as of late tries to be more moderate, the Fidez party is going in the opposite direction + they have such hard grip on the media and the propaganda that I can´t see them losing any elections any time soon.
The article is correct, the law for next year’s budget (currently being
discussed in the Parliament) doesn’t apply a limit for this tax.
We have a similar tax for the phone calls and these have a top limit at HUF 700 which is around GBP 2. The current version (not a draft as it is presented to the Parliament for debate) with the HUF 150/GByte is obviously faulty.
The estimated income is HUF 20 billion ( GPB 5 mill), and applying the
(currently nonexistant) GBP 2 top would result in around HUF 26 billion
(GBP 6 million).
I think it is a minor tweak in the legislative text to correct the links
inside, or adding a new paragraph so a top rate would be applied for
this new kind of tax in Hungary.
This is my speculation. Government officials said HUF 700 to 1000 (GBP 2-3)
as the top limit. That means if you have less than 4 Gbyte
traffic/month, you pay lass, 5 GByte and above will have to pay a total
of GBP 2-3/month.
That’s doesn’t seem too much, but we have various kinds of exotic taxes and
the highest VAT in Europe (27%), so it’s pretty much hated at this low
rate.. Also, if you have an ISP, and have 4 smartphones in the family,
you spend the price of a cheap 40 gigs SSD, or an entry level graphic
card, or a cool gaming mouse, a 7.1 headset etc just to pay this tax.
Minority governments are quite common – they have to negotiate with other parties to be able to rule. But the Hungry system gave the Fidez party a LOT more parliamentary seats than what the election results suggested.
The first party here gets a 50 seats bonus in a parliament of 300. Can you beat that?
Ouch, that is bad.
governments ripping tax tax tax they are the robbers not hoodies why dont they just rob eachother numbnuts
Wait, let’s not invite hungarians to move to Romania just yet.
We’re having enough trouble as it is, with the ones that are already here
hehehe…
UPDATE: Prime Minister Orban’s party already initiated the amendment of this law. They’ll apply the HUF 700/ GBP ~2 top limit.
As they have more than 2/3 majority in the Parliament it wil most likely make it into the final form of the 2015. Budget.
So above 5 Gigabyte/month traffic it’s a GBP 2/month.
I’m Hungarian and have already moved to the UK. It’s disgusting what happens in Hungary.
Yes, but all of elections have finished last week. The next one will be in 2019.
Kiss my ass romania hahaha u live in stolen transylvania
Can they have a vote of no confidence?
They made garrymandering before of elections and “utility reductions”.
if this get alive ill say goddbye to isp and go for vocation. pirate uses Tb in downloads every month or 3rd day. so if it comes to my contry isp will get kicked faster then they can say god bye welcome. free 1g-4-5 5g. adsl telenor old tune no way. tv pr gb too ? FREEDOM for net!!
This shit will require a revolution.
we had it from 2000 years before you, we just took it back after you stole it from us during the austro-hungarian empire. it’s called reclaiming!
I see you don’t know about history… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Transylvania
yes, for a period was yours, but the Dacians were here first from 1st century and they are our ancestors. you conquered we took it back. ”After World War I, Transylvania became part of Romania. In 1940 Northern Transylvania reverted to Hungary as a result of the Second Vienna Award, but it was reclaimed by Romania after the end of World War II.” from Wiki.
Sorry, but no…. The hungarians already in romania have the balls to ask our government for public schools just for them (teaching in hungarian, HU as main language)…
On top of that they have the audacity to claim that a region of ROMANIA should become independent because there are more hungarians there then anywhere else in RO…
Sorry but no…
That is also correct and some of them are international A.holes!
The update is actually decently sensible. It’s just an extra £1.8 a month so not much.
jesus christ…another goddamn hungarian teaching others about the history and what belongs to whom… piss off seriously. Nobody gives a crap about what Hungaria was once – your history is full of distortions and lies and OPPRESSING OTHER NATIONS!!. Just the paintings that you have in your parliament are utterly laughable. History is history, focus on the future and stop spreading this “you stole… we owned it before”.. how would you like if the ancient Celts returned to this land that they OWNED way back before slavs, romans or you retarded nationalistic hungarians?? (I have many hungarian friends who don’t share the same retarded mentality as you) So again.. PHUCK OFF you brainwashed dimwit!