175 million pounds per year to collect UK metadata

The UK government estimates it will cost 175m ($266m USD) a year to collect and store metadata, while ISP's are warning that the costs could be far higher, with 15TB passing over an average connection per year. Under the bill, providers would be required to store metadata for at least 12 months.

While many people now use a VPN which can help avoid metadata collection, everyone will have to pay an internet tax in the future to meet the costs of their government tracking their internet usage, even though collecting this data for VPN users is mostly pointless. "The indiscriminate collection of mass data is going to have a massive cost", says Matthew Hare of ISP Gigaclear.