I don't know if this is serious and progressing through. If it's not inevitable it is ludicrous because why would any government want to infuriate a huge part of the electorate. Bearing in mind I haven't followed this properly it looks like a committee made recommendations and for whatever reason, most likely their remit, came up with this whopper which was leaked to the media possibly by Downing Street either to "bury" bad news at the time or crank it up in the future, leave it a few days for the electorate to be goaded by Downing Street spoon feeding the media and then a statesmanlike Mr Brown saying charmingly at a convenient time he would not allow the poorest in the land to suffer a 5% increase on their line rental. I may be wrong here but it's absolutely standard practice for the no spin Mr Brown.

No it is not fair. If anyone should pay it is the MP's out of their expenses and money grabbing bank managers and similar employed people as them.

Why would I be prepared to pay even 1p. towards faster broadband when I can't even get slow broadband! I had broadband for 13 months without incident, it stopped working, many engineers and scratching of heads later I was informed that 'as you are at the end of a 7 km. line it cannot be supported'. Strange how it had been supported on that same line for 13 months? The only difference is that a new development and an internet cafe had come on line between us and the exchange.

I've now solved the problem and got satellite broadband, OK so I have a huge dish on the side of my cottage, but it works. BT should be looking at being able to provide broadband service to ALL its customers before upgrading the precious few. If you're running a business (as my husband was) the dial-up is far too erratic and slow. It seems even more so when you've had broadband and lost it!

Why should everyone with a home phone line pay a tax to boost broadband which will only be available in highly populated areas? There are still some areas of the UK which cannot get ANY broadband service at all let alone super-fast speeds. Providers should focus on ensuring that 100% of the population has access to broadband via telephone line rather than satellite before spending money to improve a service which will benefit only those in more densely populated areas.

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