Out with the old, in with the new? (15 December 1999) Our Inbox has confirmed long-held suspicions. We've always had doubts about Calls and Access organisations, such as Greatxscape and screaming.net, which also provide Internet services. They resell existing BT services - provided your phone line is signed over to them or their parent telecommunications operator - but work with a business model which gives unmetered and subscription-free Internet access. Our worry has been that such a service is subsidised through profits from metered voice calls being made on the same line. What if too few such calls are made? Greatxscape has found out. It has decided to impose a 20 hour per month limit on Internet access to its dialup number. From the FAQ: Q. How are TELNET and greatxscape related? A.TELNET offers most of the services you receive from BT. Greatxscape provides a fully comprehensive internet and e-mail service. If you are a TELNET customer you receive up to 20 hours per month internet access and usage in the evenings and at weekends by using greatxscape. Its is important that you use Telnet services to access the GreatXscape internet service and for substantially all your other calls. This is necessary because we rely on a community of users and it is essential we avoid individual unfair customer usage. Frankly, we're surprised that Greatxscape was so naive as to think anything else would happen in the end - people were hardly going to go through the awkward process of signing over their phone line from BT for the sake of somewhat cheaper voice calls. And describing heavy (their definition) Internet users as abusers is unhelpful. One enterprising group of subscribers has set up a Web site to press for an additional subscription fee for Internet access - which Greatxscape should surely have levied in the first place. But, with true unmetered access (standing on its own and not dependent on subsidies) seemingly close at hand the whole freak show of attempts at unmetered tariffs will soon, we hope, be swept away for good.