I want to know what their version of high speed braodband is, because if it's below 5 meg they can suck my balls if they want more money from me.

The minimum from what I read, is 2 MB.

Great, now we are paying a tax for people to pirate faster...

Oh the irony!

How, precisely, are you going to not pay the 50p tax per month? Try withholding it from your direct debit - see how far that gets you. Once again, the government ****s up a perfectly good consultation by putting utterly, utterly ridiculous ****e into the pot - and ensuring that instead of MAKING BT or the other national telcos roll out BB to rural areas at their expense, WE, the taxpayers, will pay for it.

I thought it would be an optional payment. Bloody tv license that we shouldn't have had to pay since about 1993 as the BBC has been complete bollocks since that time with onlthe odd good show on

Well, all I can say is without TV Licence I would be without a job.

And the BBC offers a lot more,

• 8 national television channels (BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three, BBC Four, CBBC, CBeebies, BBC News, BBC Parliament)
• BBC Red Button interactive TV
• BBC HD
• 10 national radio stations (Radio 1, 1Xtra, Radio 2, Radio 3, Radio 4, Radio 5 Live, 5 Live Sports Extra, 6 Music, Radio 7, BBC Asian Network)
• National TV and radio services for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and over 40 local radio stations for England
• BBC Online, BBC iPlayer, BBC Mobile and the BBC channel on YouTube
  
  And thats just the services for the UK. Not mentioning the rest of the world in over 100 countries.

More money..Dont see the need for that if you have a faster connection. What about our korean friends, look at the speed they've got and what they are paying.

I know, its because here our tax payers money (and last month alone I paid 400 quid of it) are going to afghan families claiming over 160k a year on benefits and living in a 6 bedroom mansion...

So when is Gordon coming round to suck your balls?

I know, exactly. But this could be a debate that never ends if we get into it. Would be nice to eventually move to a tax free haven, somewere like Monaco maybe

Onnnnnnnn the other hand... we ARE bombing their country back to the stone age so that American and European companies can go in and 'restructure' it for them...

And if you want to talk tax, last month my deductions were £1,338.07. I'm happy to pay that - its one of the few drawbacks to living in a country where I have a reasonable standard of life that I didn't arrive at by raping, killing or exploiting people.

we screwing them, they are screwing us! What goes around, cums around!

Zebulebu, are we talking about the same country here ?

The standard of living is good depending on your income, the area you live in and who you share it all with.

If you actually take a look at some other tropical countries, they have a low per capita rate, yet people there live virtually stress free and they enjoy life a lot more than we do here.

But going back to topic, korean internet rawks.

He'll get slap if he comes round my place

Still doesn't make it a good service or worth the money paid for it though.

There is one good thing in the BBC Trust's response, is that they don't want the underspend on digital switchover to go to other services they want to lower the licence fee instead.

The TV licence is worth it for in the night garden alone as it keeps my son quiet for 20 minutes lol

On a serious note it won't take long until this 50p a month tax raises upto £5 a month tax and keeps going up. BT should be broken up and the different parts of the business sold off as they are happy to sit back and stick to their crappy stone age system and not invest in the next generation of broadband technologies. Korea are ready to roll out Gbit broadband and we are talking about getting the country onto 2Mbps. To me that is pathetic when more content is being put online. BT can't even get the basics right.

Just to return to topic (as we seem to have wandered off into a debate about BBC Lic fees) ....

The Govt has made much of opening up services for different telephone providers and it is true that some good call rates are out there. However, what has not been addressed is that the basic line rental is still fairly high and this proposal will just add another 50p to that.

There was also, some years back, a petiton to no. 10 that was trying to force a reduced line rental where the end user would not make any telephone calls (in or out) but just use the line for broadband access only. This seemed to fail but, speaking personally, I would have less objection to the tax if this option were available.

Tell you what then, I'll make you a deal. You go and live in one of these 'tropical countries' that have a 'virtually stress free life'. After you've lived there for five years, come back and let me know just how 'virtually stress free' it was, m'kay?

Until then, I'll continue to live in a country that has a free health service, free (and good) primary and seconday education for all, a life expectancy approximately 20 years longer than most 'tropical countries', a murder rate a gazillion times lower than most 'tropical countries' etc etc etc.

Nothing in life is free. You want a good standard of living, you pay for it.

Unless, of course, you're super-rich - in which case you pay precisely f***-all due to the army of bottom feeders whose existence relies on ensuring you pay zero tax to the country you were fortunate enough to be born in.

You could all just cancel your home phone line and use your mobile and mobile broadband.