David Watson, a spokesman for the company, said: “It’s costing us money, but we see it as a stepping stone to move customers up into the broadband offerings we will be introducing through DSL technology and satellite.”
The cost of the service to the ISP is largely due to problems securing the BT wholesale Friaco service. It is unlikely that World Online will continue its current business model unless wholesale Friaco is available to it by early 2001. When it is available, World Online will no longer need to pay per-minute line costs to BT. The same problem has caused other ISPs to abandon unmetered access services.
Ezesurf, which launched a similar service last year, went into voluntary liquidation yesterday. AltaVista UK’s Managing Director resigned this week following the failure of the company’s unmetered service to launch. LineOne and Callnet0800 are stopping unmetered services this month and Virgin Net has shelved its plans for such a service.