God forbid that we should ever follow Britain. . . but just as Britain is in a flurry of driving down Internet access charges and in some cases, doing away with them entirely (well, except for those pesky "one-off connection charges") comes news that here, they're going up.

With much trumpeting, Esat last week launched its new Net connection options - repackaged under the Ireland On-Line moniker. Special attention was lavished on their flat rate access package, which gives Net surfers unlimited use of the Net at off-peak times for a mere £20 a month.

The only problem is, before the name change the same package cost £17 per month.