McGrath, the licence's purely for the privilege of being able to *watch* TV. However you go about it, or even whether or not you do, is up to yourself and for yourself to pay for.

I pay DKK 149 for my broadband connection each month, £18.25 at today's exchange rate. That's just for getting myself online. Then I pay about £85 every 6 months to the service provider hosting my website, but that's another story.

On top of this I pay to my housing association, and have for all the years I didn't have a TV, too, a monthly fee for what they call the 'small package' of TV channels. I get about 12 channels, and for that I pay about £6-7 a month. As the housing association gets 'a deal' from the provider, you can't avoid it by proving you don't have a TV, it's simply collected with the rent for the flat. I'm not sure about the fee for the 'full package' of about 30 channels, but it must be somewhere between £20-30 a month.

And anything to do with telephone comes on top of this and is charged entirely separately. It's quite a lot of money when you start adding it all up!

All the time I didn't have a TV, and didn't pay the TV licence, I used to get letters every year or so along the lines of 'are you SURE you don't have a TV? You do know that you're liable to pay if...' and 'about 95% (rising to 99% after it turned into a media licence) of all Danes are liable to pay the TV licence'. Basically, those letters said 'we think you're cheating, but we can't prove it'. One lady here got so upset with one of these TV licence letters that she sent a letter to a national newspaper asking them to please come visit and verify that she did NOT have any electronics making her liable to pay TV licence.

Best wishes,

Bente