If any of you actually have landlines, looks like this is the time to give them up!

[Jux]

So we're finally going to get 'high-speed broadband' in all those places where there is no cable etc and it's going to be financed at least partly by a 'levy' on landlines.

That's the problem with living in the countryside - it wasn't cabled up at the time at which the big towns were being done. Result? Not worth the comms industry's time and money to do it. I moved in here knowing it wasn't cabled and would never be. Good old Gordo has decided that we, and all the outlying villages (some of which barely have phone comms) will be cabled up and he will charge people with landlines for the pleasure.

So far, no comms provider is particularly interested. Wonder why?

I'm really annoyed about this. We are already being charged over the odds for a landline that we can't get rid of because we can't get cable. They charge us £4.50 a quarter for the privilege of not paying by direct debit and goodness knows how much extra if we don't pay immediately. Now we can pay for someone else's broadband.

You can be quite sure it won't be 50p a month for long.

our road is only just coming up 3 years old but there is no cable however sky have come into there own as can offer phone broadband and tv here don't know if it would be available in your area may be worth asking

It does seem inherently unfair doesn't it?

I'm actually pretty satisfied with my bb atm. and we already paid some stupid amount so my mum could have Sky when we moved here so she could still watch all her sports stuff (which she'd got via cable before).

I suppose they think that all those who will benefit from it are those with landlines, so why not? It is annoying that everyone else got it free though.

Thing is, LesbianMummy1, that we get our bb and Sky through a phone line which is a landline. Even if we didn't use it for calls we would still have to pay for the line and therefore would be liable for this wonderful tax.

If I lived in the country I wouldn't want cable anyway. I'd want the landline upgraded so I could pick the broadband provider I wanted.

What broadband can you get via cable? Virgin? They are a joke. Fast speeds, but if you use it too much they take it away from you.

I pay all in to sky so much cheaper than bt and got £15 discount for first 6 months and £10 after that so free line rental and free talk unlimited feel that offsets any extra costs really nicely.

I would expect that the £6 annual contribution (is that right) will be for all lines, regardless of if they are standard BT lines, Kingston Telecom lines, Local loop unbundled (such as when you pay your bill in full to Sky, Tiscali, TalkTalk) or if it is a cable phone.

I don't use my home phone line for voice... but it is used for data - as I have broadband (at less than 2Mbps it should be noted, so my line does not meet the new minimum spec).

If the plan is to replace all copper twister pair lines with fibre then that's all well and good. But I'm not sure that is what will be happening... will they be getting a fibre link, or will it only be fibre to a certain point, then coper wire?