Think their suddenly realizing they can't make as much if any money out of the internet thingy !!!
It is a different story in over their in England where it is pay by the minute. With BT's strangle hold on the telecom industry, it just seems like they are where we were in the 70's before the breakup of AT&T. Pay-for-play will change your entire view of the internet.
I just don't get how Alta figured they could provide the service in the first place. This can't bode well for them. I can't recall a company their size ever making such a huge mistake.
btw: because we have such a large following in the UK, I have done everything I can here to reduce the size of page and reduce load time.
BT introduced a payment scheme called Surftime that will allow 24 hour unlimited access or Free Access 1800 til 0800 and all weekend. The so called lower access chages are a joke as they are more than you can already get from other calltime providers such as Cable and Wireless.
Due to the idio scyncies of Oftel the telecom watchdog, BT's own ISP BT Internet was not allowed to offer unlimited access to their regular users except via some weird overpriced business package. The take up has been small.
This is a crazy country.
As an example GAS and ELECTRICITY supplies were de-regulated.
It is now cheaper to Buy Gas from Eastern Elecricity and buy ELECTRICITY from British Gas. In our country we call that progress.....but at least we haven't got George (Insincere)Bush and Al Bore ;)
Todays story on alta [theregister.co.uk].
It isn't. The basic one is 6pm to midnight and all w/e to Sunday midnight. There is a new one coming on (supposedly already there - but only in a few areas) which goes on till 8am
Like everyone else, they say its starts on a certain date. One or two months later it's still not available to most.
>Is cable very widespread over there
for cities and large towns, yes - but not if you're a mile off the beaten track. However, Cable & Wireless (also=ntl) provide free 0800 via BT as well as cable (as long as you use their service for the phone too) That's how ntl can afford free access, they're pinching more BT customers.
BT are bringing in ADSL - again supposedly started but only for large business customers at present, though they originally promised private customers for August. They 'hope' to cover 90% of UK in the next 2 years.
And how. I was involved in a programming forum in which the Brits kept screaming about needing to delete items that US-based sites wanted, browser-based admin scripts for instance. It turns out that admins in pay-for-play countries want offline capabilities. Not too difficult to understand why, but it just didn't occur to us until they howled. I'd be interested to know if browser-based services like Hotmail are avoided for this reason.
Yes, I've had the original surftime from June too but I got so fed up with them moving the goalposts, I signed on with ntl too. As long as I spend £10 pm on ordinary phone calls, its free 24 hrs
I phoned BT a week or so back and the 'new' surftime "isn't available" in my area yet!!
SurfTime is all washed up
24 August - DN Wire -- BT's unmetered service has failed to attract customers and ISP partners, it emerged yesterday.
According to figures released by BT, SurfTime has a mere 200,000 subscribed users, despite the telecom giant spending around £20 million on promoting the service. Not only does the actual number of users fall well short of BT's projections, but the figures translate into a cost of £100 per customer - not particularly impressive.
The company insists that it is pleased with the latest figures, arguing that the holiday season is traditionally a slow period. Nevertheless, yesterday's announcement will be seen by many as proof that BT hasn't done itself any favours with its arguably obstructive antics over flat-rate Internet access.
SurfTime has been looking unsteady ever since its inception. Shortly before the service was launched at the start of June, industry regulator Oftel forced BT to provide an alternative unmetered package to Internet service providers (ISPs). At the time, a combination of technical problems and pricing issues caused many to write off BT's service altogether. Errol Ziya, a campaigner for unmetered Internet access in the UK, said "SurfTime will either fade away or be radically overhauled...the numbers just never added up."
In fact, BT has only managed to attract five ISPs to SurfTime, and two of those are BT Click and BT Internet. The comment made by a BT spokesman back in June - "if neither ISPs nor the public want [SurfTime], it will die a death" - is now looking eerily prophetic.
ComputerBuyer
Now the Big question- will it get relaunched BEFORE I get a hit from Essex Pages????
Incidently, over the past two weeks I've been getting some enquiries originating from SCOOT- anything been happening there?
