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Unmetered manoeuvres in the dark
Autumn approaches with unseemly haste, and still no one seems to have quite put their finger on how unmetered net access is going to work in the UK.

By Graham Hayday

Published: Friday 22 September 2000

AOL hurled the telecoms cat among the online pigeons early in the week, announcing flat-rate access for £14.99 per month. That figure covers all charges and freephone customer support. The offer is initially only open to existing AOL customers, but the company claims it will roll out the service to all UK consumers as soon as it is 'viable' (whatever viable means).

A couple of days later, World Online did its own soft shoe shuffle (and in the process managed to mimic the dance moves of OMD singer Andy McCluskey) and changed the terms of its unmetered packages less than a month after claiming it was quite happy with the existing ones.

Users of its Freedom 24 offering previously paid £14.99 a month for unlimited access. They will now be capped at 100 hours per month, after which 1p a minute will be charged. Users of the Freedom Lite model, which previously offered unlimited off-peak access, will now be limited to 50 hours a month (after which 1p a minute will again be charged).

Last month, World Online said it was subsidising users to the tune of £700 per head per month. It had planned to recoup this investment by targetting future broadband services at this high-end user segment.

Last Friday, AltaVista, still smarting from its own unmetered climb down, announced that it's axing one quarter of its workforce as it goes back to its rootes as a pure-play search engine company.

All the casualties of the debacle have used the word Friaco - not a modern day expletive, but the wholesale unmetered package BT offers other ISPs. Problem is, the ISPs don't think Friaco has been rolled out quickly enough - or well enough. A spokesman for World Online said: "When we launched Freedom 24 we expected Friaco would be rolled out by July. The time between that promise and commercial reality has grown. But this is a short-term action, once Friaco is widely available we will revise the pricing structure."

And yet AOL thinks Friaco is working well enough for it to have a viable offering now.

So BT is under the spotlight again, as is Oftel. The watchdog was lambasted in several Sunday newspapers last weekend for pussy-footing about; this week, international carrier RSL COM described it as "toothless", alleging that it's putting the vision of "broadband Britain" under threat.

Expect more claim and counter claim over the coming months. These patently unorchestrated manoeuvres are far from over.

E-envoy: game for a laugh?

Could the new e-envoy sort it all out? Probably not. Our own readers think the job should go to either Jim Norton, the head of the Institute of Directors, or Rene Carayol, former IT director and now man-with-finger-in-many-pies. The other names doing the rounds are Ann Steward, currently director of e-government for the Cabinet Office, and Margaret Smith, director of business technology and delivery for Legal and General.

But one Round-Up reader has his own thoughts: "Do we actually need one? They achieve bugger all and they cost a lot of money. We've already got BT directors doing that particular job."

Supermarket sweep

Uncertainty reigns in the supermarket world. Budgens has abandoned its move online. It said its internet home shopping service hadn't caught on and will cease to be available from Monday.

Meanwhile, Tesco has widened its range of online services with a move into electrical goods. It'll offer 1,000 product lines and a free delivery service.

And dear old Iceland (which is where my mum's gone, apparently, leaving my dad to do man's work like, err, dozing in front of the telly) is proudly adding a '.co.uk' to its store fronts.

So Iceland's online strategy is very 21st century. Shame its advertising strategy hasn't quite caught up.

Olympic games

QuickTime, Apple's streaming media division, proudly sent out a newsletter detailing its latest services. It was particularly excited about its Olympic coverage. "Great news," the blurb begins. "FoxSports (one of our exciting QuickTime TV Channels) and News Interactive Australia team up to bring you extensive streaming video coverage from the Olympic Games in Sidney, Australia."

The people of Sydney, Australia are less excited about their hometown being misspelt (as a loyal Round-Up reader called Adrian pointed out.) A typo perhaps? Nope. The email continued to spell it with the consistency of the Equatorial Guinea swimming team's performance in the pool (consistently badly, that is).

We'll always have... Madeira

Tony Blair wants the UK to be the best place in Europe to do ecommerce. It's not. It is, in fact, Madeira. The place better known for a cake has a lot to offer, according to consultancy Corporate and Treasury. It's got the lowest VAT rate in Europe. A cracking transport infrastructure. Great telecoms services. A multilingual population. EU-approved tax benefits.

(And perhaps nicer weather).

Sounds reasonable (see http://www.CorporateTreasury.net for more info). But can it be co-incidental that the company behind the research provided two contact addresses on its release, one in the UK, and one in - wait for it - Madeira?

Now, they wouldn't be trying to get more clients to join them in the sun, would they?

Actually, that's a great idea. The Weekly Round-Up will be written from Barbados next Friday. Anyone fancy joining us there?

Don't forget, the Round-Up is now available online in the back\\slash section of the all-new silicon.com (click on the 'resources' button on the left hand navigation bar of the in-box). In fact, the site is now so good, we picked up another award this week (the European Ecommerce Association's gong for best biz-to-biz website. According to the judges, we have "very quickly become a standard for content-based sites in the business to business sector". They were also impressed by our modesty.)

Til next time...