“The Basic Digital Success Package, the chief aim of which it to enable the 200-250 thousand people who have not connected to the world wide web so far for financial reasons to become net users, will become available among the product range of service providers from this summer”, Prime Ministerial Commissioner for the Digital Success Programme Tamás Deutsch said at a press conference in Budapest.

“According to the latest studies, one and a half million people are not internet users and 14 percent of these people cited financial reasons as the chief reason”, he noted. “Government measures have already been implemented to remedy the most often cited reason, a lack of competency”, he added.

Mr. Deutsch indicated that service providers may now submit their applications to use the state-owned trademark, and following an accelerated process companies will have 45 days to include the new package, which will be at least 15 percent cheaper than the most favourable package they currently offer, in their selection of products. The administration hopes this will enable many people to connect to the digital ecosystem by making internet access affordable following the first two, one-year periods of use.

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The Prime Ministerial Commissioner recalled that on 1 January this year the level of VAT on internet services was cut from 27 percent to 18 percent, and according to the proposal currently before Parliament will be further reduced to 5 percent from the beginning of next year. Together with the introduction of the Basic Digital Success Package, this measure means that prices will have fallen by at least 35 percent.

Mr. Deutsch told the press that every large and medium-sized service provider has already indicated that they will be applying to take part in the Programme, and several have indicated their intention to provide clients who choose this package a higher discount than they currently provide for their cheapest package.

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The option may be chosen by anyone who has not had a similar contract for either mobile or wired services within the previous year, either on their own name, or on the name of a close relative, or tied to their place of residence. The expectation is for the basic package to include fourth generation (4G) services and a monthly data allowance of at least 500 megabytes, while in the case of wired services packages should provide unlimited data and a nominal download speed of 30 megabits/second and a nominal upload speed of 8 megabits/second, he explained.

(MTI)