Hungary's prime minister says the government will suspend a planned tax on Internet usage and reconsider the matter next year after backlash.
Two protests within the past week attended by tens of thousands of people were sparked by a scheme to make Internet service providers pay 150 forints ($0.62) per gigabyte of Internet traffic, later proposed to be capped at different monthly rates for individual and business users.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Friday the tax will not be introduced because "people have questioned the rationality" of the measure, but added the government will hold a national consultation from mid-January about regulating and taxing the Internet.
Orban also said Hungary would stick to its plan to offer broadband Internet access to every household by 2020.
A European Commission spokesman, Ryan Heath, said the tax was "bad in principle." Rian Wanstreet, a research fellow at the Center for Media, Data and Society at Central European University in Budapest and the special projects manager at Access, a human rights organization, told Mashable the proposed move to tax Internet use sounded "like a bad joke taken too far."
Opponents of the internet tax are planning a “celebratory” demonstration on Facebook, the Guardian reports.