Tempomania! (27 April 1999) Tempo, an electrical retailer based in the South-East of England and the Midlands, has teamed up with LocalTel and set up an ISP, screaming.net, for business on 29 April. The very distinctive feature of this ISP is that calls to it between 6pm and 8am weekdays and all weekend, although to a non-geographic (0345) number, will attract no charge. Tempo's belief is that it will recoup the metered interconnect charges LocalTel incurs for these calls from: profits on paid voice and data calls (LocalTel will offer roughly 10% off BT rates for other call types); publicity attracting people to its stores; online advertising; kudos. We know of two catches: the existing BT (not cable) line must be taken over by LocalTel; prospective subscribers have to collect one of a limited number of CDs from a Tempo store in person. And there are only 70,000 CDs in total (so we are told) and 44 stores with not much north of Leicester. Immediately the news leaked out our mailing list erupted: there have been over 50 posts to the list every day this week. We already know of people preparing to go around in cars between stores to collect CDs, Web pages gathering email addresses, people offering other people money to make an appearance on Thursday morning and other manifestations of what I call Tempomania; there's a new UK currency developing, the tempocd, which doesn't require a referendum to implement it ... Really, the fuss has been so tremendous we wonder whether Tempo has really thought through the consequences of its offer.