The main reason the US is so far ahead of the rest of the world in internet usage is that they have flat-rate telephone calls. Users pay a monthly rental then surf as long as they like. Because they don't feel they are "on the clock" with charges mounting up all the time they spend much more time learning, chatting and visiting e-commerce sites. A report by Durlacher this week claims that the UK internet economy is being "dramatically held back" by the absence of unmetered calls. The research shows that average residential users could triple their use from 130 to 386 hours per year if unmetered access were introduced.

In the US the driving force for cheap access was fierce competition whereas in the UK (and, to be fair, most other countries) domestic telephone monopolies were left largely unaffected by privatisation. It was never in their interest to risk something that might dent their revenues. But now the market is changing fast as BT faces new competition from cable companies. In the domestic market Telewest, the UK's largest cable company, is to introduce unlimited web access for a flat monthly fee of £10 (as long as subscribers make £10 worth of ordinary calls a month). This makes BT's plans (from £6.99p a month for free weekend access to 34.99p for unlimited access all the time) look expensive.

In the business market, the American company Metromedia Fibre Network is laying high capacity fibre-optic cables (each hair thread of which can carry 4m phone calls at once) in central London. These will, for the first time, be tariff-free after rental payments. BT argues that, until recently, there wasn't the demand for unlimited access to the web. But in the internet world supply generates its own demand. And in the internet world delays of even a few months can be fatal. In the national and corporate interest BT should introduce affordable unmetered access now. Then it can sit back and watch demand booming.