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More unmetered access on its way They have details of BTClick offering a service that seems similar to the SurfTime tariff. They quote prices of £7 per month for off-peak access and £35 for 24/7 access. ISPreview also go on to mention another ISP called Calenet. The service they provide is in fact Ezesurf. As well as the usual free local call Internet access, Calenet offer two other options; FreeCall and FreeCall Plus. Freecall offers one year of 24/7 0808 access for £39. Subject to a two-hour cut-off (one-hour during 9.30am and 5.30pm Monday to Friday). The FreeCall Plus option is aimed at business users with a lot of extras and is priced at £235, but also supports 128K ISDN. BT Internet apologises for downtime They have posted this on their status page: BT Internet apologises to any of our customers who were inconvenienced as a result of the 0800 problems experienced on Thursday 30th March. We are however pleased to announce an extended 0800 access on the evening of Thursday 6th April to account for this loss of service. On this night 0800 service will be available from 5pm (instead of 6pm), and will run through to 2am (instead of midnight). LineOne unlimited Internet goes live The free deal, which was promised to the public earlier this month, consists of: Completely free unrestricted Internet calls 24/7/365 No monthly or annual subscription charge Discounted national and International telephone calls Users must spend a minimum of £5 per month on normal telephone calls with Quip and a one off £20 for a telephone adapter, which should be delivered within 14 days. However after signing up with Quip, you can, if you have followed the set-up instructions correctly, you will be able to use your free Internet calls immediately. It is also open to non-BT customers. You can choose to pay by credit card (Visa or MasterCard), debit card (Switch or Delta) or direct debit. You will be asked for details of your preferred method of payment when you complete your registration. More unmetered services on the horizon From sometime in April, MadHouse.net will be launching their 0800 service, which sounds like it may be using BT Surftime. You are able to register for further details. Also mentioned was Games-World.net. They will be launching an 0844 service in June, but as yet no further details are available. RedHotAnt in system upgrade ”We are experiencing a massive initial rush for our services. This has obviously placed a strain on our services and, being pro-active, we are currently upgrading our bandwidth substantially. You may experience slow download speeds during peak times (6 to 10pm), this is due to a bandwidth delivery issue, our backbone provider is looking into this problem. We will be upgrading our backbone to a 45MB "T3" Link, this will be installed by the end of this week, this should resolve the bandwidth issues that are currently being experienced. The demand for our service has caused us to queue all subscriptions for not more than 48 hours to cope with this huge demand. I apologise for the inconvenience caused and thank you all and Net4Nowt, in anticipation, for your patience while we resolve this problem.” Hopefully they will be back to normal soon. Latest update on RedHotAnt A number of visitors have informed us that they have been having problems with RedHotAnt, and were concerned that they were “going down the pan.” The Operations Director, Clive Allon, has reassured us that they are currently upgrading their system to compensate. “We have been amazed at the obvious desperation for free calls. Initially we were hit by thousands of subscribers and as we did with Free4all, made some pro-active decisions. We therefore are at present upgrading our service to accommodate this initial surge in users.” Supanet in high speed ADSL trial The trial offered by Supanet will last for three months and will cost £50 per month inclusive of calls. The trial will start on April 10th, and after visiting the SupaADSL.com site, we found that it is also open to home and business users: "The trials are open to 200 Internet users in the UK subject to a supanet and BT review. We need a cross section of different types of users e.g. business, school and home users. This will ensure that the test provides a true reflection of how people will use ADSL technology. The trials will take place in Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and the M25 corridor." Unmetered access for NTL cable customers KeConnect offers 24/7 0800 access to its users who are NTL cable customers. Subject to a 3-hour disconnect, the Internet access costs £29.99 per month. Although it is only available in certain areas, it is still another step in the right connection of unmetered access for all. KeConnect allow connection upto 64K, but you will need another account if you wish to use two channels. CLI is also required. Payment is by credit or debit card and you can signup online at KeConnect. Telewest launches high speed cable access It offers unmetered access to broadband services 24 hours a day from £50 per month, including access to live video, live traffic reports and instant download of music CDs and books. Chief Executive of Telewest, Tony Illsley said: “These services give us clear leadership over competitors. They represent the real dawning of the broadband interactive age, and they being rolled out to our customers now.” “At £50 per month, this is a premium service; not one that will offer exceptional value to serious Internet users, home workers, professional people and others.” “Despite what one reads, the reality of broadband applications people talk about and even seem to take for granted, actually don’t yet exist – or if they do, not on a large scale, reliable basis. We aim to change that.” Global SoHo to launch unmetered service They will be charging £19.99 per month payable by credit card or cheque for unmetered access, although it will be subject to a 2-hour cut off. Initially it will be limited to 50,000 users to ensure a decent service. As well as the unmetered package, sohoDIAL+, they also provide an ordinary free ISP service using an 0845 dial-up number. The sohoDIAL+ package is aimed at small business users and offers the following: UK domain name registration Although it is not expected to launch until July/August, you can register your details to receive the latest news and information. Free Internet Group launches their new 0800 ISP Offering its members free access and free telephone connection to the Internet with no monthly subscription charges, TheFreeInternet.Net aims to enable a larger percentage of the UK market to join the Internet generation. TheFreeInternet.Net is aiming to be the biggest ISP in Europe within two years. "We see the UK as being clearly the most developed European Internet market thus - the ideal launch pad from which we can expand into the rest of the EC", says Christopher Whalen, managing director, Free Internet Group Limited. "Our strength lies in our ability to only work with the best", continues Whalen, a 41 year old former investment banker for Prudential Volpe Technology Group in New York. "We have contracts with Cisco Systems, the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet, to provide the hardware and ongoing technical support for the service. MCI Worldcom is the primary telecommunications carrier that will provide service to the 3.5 million members we hope to attract to TheFreeInternet.Net over the next 12 months." Whalen added: "Free Internet Group will utilise the Business Online Group, who pioneered 0800 free access in the UK some two years ago, to host the service as its backbone and applications provider." Free Internet Group confirmed that it would charge a "one-off" membership fee of £50.00 that will enable members to access the free calls service. There will be an annual renewal fee of £20.00. "To launch a successful 0800 free calls, free connection service in the UK we felt we needed to give our members the best possible content right from the start" continued Whalen, "so we are finalising deals with a couple of major UK search engines/portals to provide content to our members." Yet another unmetered service… RedHotAnt.com from Free4All is offering three different packages depending on how much you use the Internet. All have a one-off fee of £30 followed by their own annual payments. Basic Service (£10 per year) Online sign-up is available, although un-secure. I suggest you print out the form and send it by post. Credit and debit cards are taken, as are cheques and postal orders. You can also register by ringing 08700 11 80 80. 0800freedom latest In an email sent out today to everyone who has pre-registered they said: “Thank you for waiting for our TRULY FREE Internet service to go live. All we ask is for a little more patience and that you save your money by resisting other ISPs who offer supposedly free access for just a little bit longer, our offer will be much better. We have been busy developing the site to give you the very best in content and services and we're nearly there. We'll be contacting you over the next few weeks about our live date, so thanks once again for being the first users in the UK to experience TRULY FREE Internet - we're worth the wait!” Well they had better hurry up, they have been promising an imminent launch since November last year. They are to offer totally free 24/7 0800 access in exchange for you displaying an advertisement banner. £10 unmetered service from FreeNet ISPreview got there first again and spilt the beans on the latest ISP to offer an unmetered service. FreeNet will be offering their new service in April at a flat monthly rate of just £10. Payment options will include standing order as well as the usual credit card. Further details will no doubt be released nearer the time. Tiny Online to offer unmetered access The article went on to say that for less than £30 per month, users will receive 24/7 unmetered access. While off-peak access will be priced at less than £10. Colin Greene, General Manager of Tiny Online said he would not name the telco behind the service or exact prices, but sounds like it could very much be the SurfTime deal from BT which is due for launch in June. Localtel billing problems – update Doc forwarded my email to somebody else within Localtel and as a result a payment plan has now been set-up. They already had the correct payment details but for some reason never collected the payments. They have now taken the first half of the amount outstanding with the remainder due in April. Hopefully we will now be billed as normal. Cheers Localtel. Freenetname in ADSL trial They are expecting to provide the service to its customers in the beginning of July, but have not yet released any price details. You can register your details here. Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) provides a fast and continuous unmetered connection using your existing BT line, without the need for additional lines. Although it will only be available in certain areas at first, BT has plans to expand it throughout the UK. For further details on ADSL click here. 0800 access from Madasafish Although exact details are scarce at the moment, they promise to deliver a quality service. It sound as though they will be offering several different packages to suit your surfing needs. You are able to register your details with them and Madasafish will notify you more information nearer the launch. Click here for a full list of all the latest 0800/unmetered services available. Localtel billing problems Since joining Screaming.net in June last year and after setting up our method of payment, we have now received a letter headed ‘Notice of Intention to Suspend Service’ a month after receiving our first bill. Here is what is says: "Despite previous reminders we have been unable to collect payment from you by a valid electronic payment method and your account remains unpaid. Your telephone service is scheduled to be barred for outgoing calls and to be made incoming calls only on 24/03/00. In order to restore your service a reactivation charge of £15.00 will be made and you will be required to pay a deposit as security against further charges. In addition, you will be charged £5 on your next bill because you do not have a valid electronic payment method in place." If we fail to pay the outstanding amount, which covers the past 9 months, Localtel will "instigate proceedings to collect the full amount". We have tried to contact customer services by telephone, but after receiving a recorded announcement saying they are busy we are disconnected with us facing the minimum call fee every time. They never answer the emails we send. When you do get through to customers services by phone, you are faced with an automated service which takes you through loads of options. When you manage to select the option to speak to a human, you get disconnected because they are busy. For a company, this sort of customer service is disgraceful. If the customer services isn’t enough to put you off, then the Screaming.net service probably will. They have improved a lot since they launched last year and now have a news server up and running. But lately the speeds have been so slow, it is like watching paint dry. We have emailed David 'Doc' Watson from Localtel and we will let you know his response. It’s in the post… finally Visitors to Net 4 Nowt have posted messages in our forum saying that they have now started to receive their dialler from CallNet0800, although they are not very clearly marked as to who it is from. They also lack any instructions as to how to obtain free Internet access. Some visitors to this site have also told us that even though they registered back in November last year, they are still waiting for their account to be activated. Originally launched in November last year, CallNet0800 offers 24/7 0800 access to its users who agree to join up to CallNet Telecom. After only a couple of days they stopped accepting new registrations due to a backlog of applicants. They opened up again in February but this time they insist on you buying a dialler which automatically routes your telephone calls through them and saves 30% on customer’s calls. The dialler costs £19.99 and your telephone bill is reimbursed with £20 worth of calls to compensate. Originally all calls had to be prefixed with 145. Zoom free – 0800 access announced Jumping on the unmetered access bandwagon along with AltaVista, BT, LineOne and Freeserve, Zoom announced completely free Internet access available to all Zoom members as part of its on-going loyalty shopping programme - Zoom Points. Current active loyalty program members will be eligible for the free Internet access using an 0800 number. New members will have to pay a one-off set up fee of £10, which they will receive back as a £10 voucher to spend on their favourite high-street brands including Racing Green, Dorothy Perkins, Evans and TopShop. Zoom say that there will be no charge either for connection or calls, although they are not yet accepting registrations for Zoom Free. You are able to register your email addresses with them for further details. To maintain the membership, users will need to spend quarterly 20 pounds of online shopping or earn equivalent zoom points via special Web based promotions. Freeserve hits back with unmetered announcement Customers who want free call access at off-peak times will be charged £6.99 a month from May. But in a separate offer called Freeserve Time, customers can get 24/7 unmetered access in exchange for spending at least £10 on voice telephone calls. The Freeserve Time offer is made in partnership with the telecoms group Energis. Customers will have to a BT customer and buy a box known as a "router", or dial a special code to use the Energis network when making national or international calls. Chief executive John Pluthero said: "Freeserve built its reputation with customers on low-cost internet access combined with high quality service. We will continue to set the standard for both." The offers come a week after BT, cable company NTL and US group Alta Vista all unveiled plans for flat-rate Internet access. New freecall offer from Ezesurf By purchasing a minimum of 60 shares, they will provide you with free call access to the Internet. The shares are currently valued at 0.65p each and can be bought online. This means your freecall access will cost a total of £39. For non-credit card holders you can ring 0800 083 8311 who can accept payments by cheque, postal order and bank giro credit. They say they that you can be connected within hours. But as The Matrix warns, "…you might wish to remember the 08004U disaster before putting your name down for anything." A note for ISDN users, we found this in their terms and conditions: "When using ISDN we do not allow channel bonding (128K), we only allow single channel (64K) per account, to use dual channel you agree to apply for a second account. We reserve the right to charge a flat rate of 2.5p per minute for every full minute or to the next full minute that you have used dual channel with only one account." Freeserve to offer unmetered Internet access The country's largest free ISP is to offer unlimited access in response to competitive pressure for cheaper Net access, as reported in The Observer today. The paper reported that Freeserve was poised to offer an unmetered package, possibly when it announces its third quarter results on Thursday. The company is understood to have been working on a number of schemes for some time, the newspaper said. Freeserve watched its shares drop 34 percent last week as rivals, including cable operator NTL and U.S. search engine AltaVista, said they would enter a British ISP market dominated by Freeserve since it scrapped monthly charges 19 months ago. Unmetered access from breathe Initially, registration to the service will be offered to 50,000 of its existing breathe customers. They will expand the service to allow more users to connect when possible. "There will be an initial setup fee of £50, after that, you can surf to your heart's content 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for life." breathe will be financing the service through a combination of advertising and e-commerce, and will only be open to residential customers and is not intended for commercial use or as a permanent connection to the Internet. You can register online now or you can order a CD. You can also pick up a CD from your local Toys 'R' Us, or Pocket Phone Shop. Get paid for unmetered access trial Supanet, a subsidiary of Time Computers, require 1000 users to take part in the trial of its Supafree service and as an added incentive they will be paying everyone £10 to try it out. The trial will be used by Supafree to see how people would use the Internet if an unmetered service was available. If successful, the trial will become another unmetered service that will join the many others announced this week. For more information and details on how to register, visit the Supafree site. PlusNet in BT SurfTime talks PlusNet Technologies, which has 300,000 customers, said it was in talks with BT about launching off-peak and 24-hour unmetered services when BT starts SurfTime in June PlusNet Director of Operations Michael Naylor said the company, which operates under names such as Free-Online and F9, was discussing how much it would charge on top of the connection fees announced by BT on Wednesday. It was possible its 24-hour service could cost less than £25 per month, he agreed. BT said some ISPs may not levy additional charges on top of the SurfTime rates of £5.99 for off-peak and £19.99 for 24-hour access. But its plans have been criticised by some leading ISPs as vague and expensive compared with cheap or free deals from cable operators. LineOne/Quip! announces unmetered deal Starting 31st March 2000, LineOne users will receive completely free unrestricted Internet access, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The conditions are that you must spend only a minimum of £5 per month on normal telephone talk time with Quip. There is also a one-off fee of £20 for a telephone dialler. Compared to the latest deals announced this week, it works out to be the cheapest and is also available before the launch of AltaVista and NTL. Ajay Chowdhury, managing director of LineOne said: "LineOne is the UK's second largest ISP and one of the UK's top ten trafficked sites. We are delighted to have managed to pip every other major ISP in offering the best possible unmetered internet access deal for UK consumers." CEO of the telephone company Quip!, Steve Gandy, said: "This is absolutely the best offer on the market at the moment, possibly even the world market. It will cost users nothing that they are not already spending on their monthly telephone bill. This offer will also help project the UK a step further to being one of the world leaders in Internet usage." Telewest to issue written apology All SurfUnlimited customers are expected to receive a £10 credit. Cable Internet customers who are not using SurfUnlimited will receive a credit of £5. Letters are due to be sent out within the next few days. For further details on Gordon Sharpe's experiences with Telewest, visit his site at www.12free.co.uk. |
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