This week may well be remembered as the time Britain made a giant stride towards Tony Blair's vision - and Al Gore's over a decade ago in the US - of cheap, universal access to the internet. But we are not there yet. British Telecom's new tariffs announced yesterday (including £29.25p a month for unlimited web access) are an improvement on previous offers, but are not cheap enough to deliver the internet to a mass audience. But remember, there is no such thing as a free telephone call. NTL's "free" service, revealed earlier, requires customers to subscribe to its cable TV and phone system.
No one is going to spend billions building a network simply to give calls away free - especially if free access creates unlimited demand. The important thing is to ensure that the (global) downward spiral of prices is not thwarted by BT overcharging on its monopoly of the last bit of wire to the home through which most of the "free" calls of internet service providers must ultimately travel.
The trouble is that BT instinctively acts to preserve the monopoly revenues it draws from its captive customers. Yet the UK desperately needs cheap internet access to close the two-year lag behind the US in net usage and e-commerce. The cheaper the access, the more people will use the internet and the more scope companies will have to sell their wares. It is now technologically feasible for either the mobile phone or the television set (especially digital versions) to deliver mass access to the internet, with all that this implies for progress in education, entertainment and business. Britain is well placed to seize a world lead in mobile telephony and digital television, as long as the price is right. If BT were an internet start-up company, it would probably be giving its services away free to build up a mass customer base. Instead it has a huge customer base but does not quite know what to do with it. Let it keep cutting. To keep customers in - and the competition authorities out.
Useful links:
BT
Campaign for Unmetered Telecommunications
Campaign for flat rate calls
Oftel
