Unlimited internet access for a fixed fee is the holy grail for most people who surf the web. This week the Guardian revealed that BT plans to go part of the way.
The company confirmed it will extend its Together package on December 1 to include three unlimited local evening and weekend schemes. BT Surf Together will offer unlimited internet access and metered talk time for £14.99, while a combined internet and voice package for local evening and weekend calls, going under the name BT Talk and Surf Together, will cost £17.99. BT Talk Together, an unmetered voice package will cost £14.99, capping monthly local calls at £5 above the new standard line rental of £9.99.
Surftime, the company's current unlimited internet package, has been partially killed off. The unmetered anytime scheme that costs £19.99 survives.
When the plan goes ahead the company is likely to be deluged with demands to switch because many similar fixed-cost schemes will be expensive by comparison.
At the beginning of the year promises were made by some of the biggest internet service providers (ISPs) that unlimited internet access was here to stay, and for free. AltaVista made the biggest noise about its free service and suffered the biggest humiliation when it couldn't handle the massive demand. Other providers like WorldOnline suffered similar humiliation. We were marched to the top of the hill and in a matter of weeks marched back down again.
Tanya Kreisky, editor of Internet magazine, says there have been rumours circulating for months that BT would take this kind of step and put the whole unmetered market back on track. "The company has generated £7bn from internet calls, which it never expected to make. It needed to do something like this. It is a little bit over the odds compared to pricing in the US, but BT is getting there."
Off-peak unlimited access packages from the likes of Freeserve will look weak compared to the rival from BT, which has the added benefit of allowing customers to adopt any ISP, she says.
A quick flick through the specialist internet press reveals plenty of letters complaining about Freeserve's unlimited package, which costs £10 on top of a BT line rental of £9.99. Many can't get on the net and those that do often get thrown off.
The BT deal appears to split internet users into three clear camps. There is the light user , and to people who want so little from the system unmetered access is like driving a people carrier to the newsagents.
Then there are the evening and weekend heavy users. The phrase heavy user might conjure up images of some kind of addict, but we are talking about average families with mum and dad using the net to buy plane tickets or check their bank account and children researching school work or playing games. Lastly there is the all-round heavy user, the complete addict who wants 24/7 access.
Many readers who contacted Jobs & Money after last week's article were happy with the internet access offered by their phone company. They often used a third-party phone provider like OneTel, Euphony, Atlantic Telecom or Eurobell for the the cuts in call charges they offer over BT rates. The internet services they run on top were generally considered sound.
But for the light user a package like that offered by WorldOnline would do the trick. For an extra £2.99 its Freedom Lite package gets you free calls at weekends and evenings and 1p per minute at other times. The trouble is that customers must switch to LocalTel for the phone line as well as WorldOnline as ISP. Some people solve the problem by simply putting an extra phone line for the net and keep an existing line with BT or their cable company.
The package also works for people who want to use the system in the evening and weekend. But heavy users are likely to be on the BT Together line rental of £11.99 rather than the standard rate, to be £9.99. They might want a choice of ISPs and for the sake of £3 a customer might want to stick with BT. Free ISPs that are rated highly to go with a BT connection include Claranet.co.uk and Redhotant.com.
Internet users who want access all week should look at America Online (AOL). It has an unlimited package costing £14.99 in addition to a BT line rental. It's quite a big difference in cash terms with the £17.99 all-in offer of BT Surf and Talk Together - about £7 - but the service is reliable and robust.
Cable users can opt for Telewest's Surfunlimited, which claims to be the UK's first fixed-fee unmetered internet access service and costs £10 month plus a £9 rental. NTL World is one of the last free unmetered access packages and can ride on BT lines.
High-speed cable comes - but at a snail's pace
It must be 20 years since Tomorrow's World presenter Raymond Baxter, or was it Judith Hahn, cut open a fibre optic cable and declared the digital age was upon us . Fibre optic cables have been in use for some time, but only now are we being promised the superfast telecom services heralded so long ago.
BT is slowly offering customers the chance of buying ADSL (Advanced Digital Subscriber Line). It is a way of sending digital messages down copper wires, removing the need to replace all domestic phone lines. It can reach speeds up to 10 times greater than a 56K modem, though the company only guarantees to double the speed.
Openworld is the BT ADSL package and costs £39 per month for unmetered access and £120 to install. It can cut download times dramatically, though it is not yet compatible with Apple computers. You can buy the service from ISPs like Freeserve and Claranet; the cost is the same.
The cable companies are also in the game. Telewest has Blueyonder, a high-speed cable internet service that costs about £150 to install and a fixed fee of £33 month. NTL also has a superfast cable modem service.
Cable modems are credited with being faster than ADSL, so when the cable companies eventually get their act together its customers could be ahead on the net.
