New Fee For Internet-Capable PCs In Germany

An anonymous reader writes "German online news sites heise.de and spiegel.de has stories, that from April 2005 on a fee of about 17 to 18 EUR per month must be paid to the national broadcasters in Germany for personal computers in private households, which have possible access to the internet. The fee must not be paid, if it is already paid for a TV set. Companies are said to be obliged to pay that fee from 2007 on." Those who don't read German should make use of the Fish.

Comments

Re:How much for a one-way ticket to New Zealand?

[nzgeek]

Come on down!

Come to lovely New Zealand where government regulated 'broadband' is defined as a pokey 256kbps ADSL connection provided by the monopoly lines company. The same company that undercuts its 'competitors' by offering 2Mbps at the same cost as their 'wholesale' 256kbps offering. We call Telecom NZ our own little Microsoft Minime.

Come to lovely New Zealand where we swamp towns with hydro dams, but still can't get enough electricity in high-demand (or low rainfall) years, because our one-size-fits-all "No Nukes" policy extends to harmless power stations, not just nu-cu-lar weapons and ships. (And yes, it was a New Zealander that first intentionally split the atom).

Still, it's a bloody lovely place to live. I just wish our government would get on the modern technology cluetrain once in a while.