AltaVista Blames BT For Stalling On Free Internet Service

AltaVista UK has put its unmetered internet access service “on hold”, having found it economically unviable to run the service without a discounted call rate from BT.

AltaVista, famous for its popular internet search engines, announced its intention to launch unmetered internet access in March this year (see AltaVista To Offer Unmetered Net Access). At the time it planned to charge between £30 and £50 per month for unlimited free access to the internet. The announcement was followed up by similar ones from rival companies including NTL (see NTL Returns Fire As Internet Access War Heats Up). However, when AltaVista’s service launched, the price had gone up to £60 and in the meantime research claimed that free internet access services were financially unsustainable (see Research Claims Subscription-free Internet Is Unsustainable).

Currently, ISPs offering free access must pay BT the full price for all the calls made by its subscribers going online. In May this year telecoms industry regulator OFTEL ruled that BT must begin providing Flat Rate Internet Access Call Origination (FRIACO) to rival telecoms companies and ISPs. This would mean they were charged for the number of lines taken up by the service, rather than the number of calls, in what would be known as a flat rate circuit.

Andy Mitchell, managing director of AltaVista UK said “We are reliant on the provision of flat-rate circuits from BT, direct to the end-user, to be able to offer a service that is sustainable, quality focused and economically viable. To date BT has failed to make this possible, and its continuing delays make it difficult to plan a solution.”

BT was originally expected to introduce FRIACO by September, three months after the AltaVista free internet service launched. Now the date has been put back as far as January. In the meantime, BT has launched its own unmetered internet access package.

A number of searches and campaigns in the press and on websites have so far failed to discover if any real users of AltaVista’s free internet access actually exist. Some claim the service was never even switched on. However, AltaVista insist that internet users who have taken up interim access products will be serviced by ClaraNet, while for the time being the company will concentrate on its search engines.

AltaVista: 0870 876 7953