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The latest and greatest consultation document (11 March 1999)

OFTEL's consultation document on 'free' ISPs (to recast the rather unmemorable title) has many implications.

Erol was interviewed for, and I gave comments to, BBC News Online, but even more interesting than what we had to say are remarks from David Clarke, virgin.net's Chief Executive.

We apologise for the rather bizarre English, which is a direct transcript of the video clip in the BBC News Online article and demonstrates that the written and spoken languages are two different things:

One of the issues was that local call rates seem to be high in this country. But with the telephone companies sharing the revenues with us and us passing it on to the customer, I don't think there's a need now to do anything, certainly in the Internet capacity, around the local call charges. And if fact OFTEL may be seen, if they change this, and companies like ourselves have to reintroduce subscription charges, and that's possible if OFTEL change it to the large degree, then OFTEL will be seen as putting the price of Internet access back up again.

But 'passing it on to the customer' is the problem. We were not aware that the quantity of 'freeness' in 'free' ISPs was proportional to the amount of usage. So we expect an advertising campaign:

Use us twice as much and we'll give you twice as much 'freeness' back! Use us five times as much and get so much 'freeness' back you could buy a Metro with it!
The lack of objectivity of David Edmonds' comments we'll leave for another time.

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