Bt To Offer Unmetered Local Calls From Dec
Martin Burns
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User since: 26 Apr 1999
Articles written: 143
UK news site The Register have uncovered a bit of stunning news -
BT are to offer unmetered calls by the end of the year. This has not as yet been announced by BT, nor is it confirmed by other sources I've seen, so the following must all be taken with the usual caveats.
The new tariff, likely to be branded BT Together Local, will cover both voice and data, however, given BT's rearguard fight against anything helping internet users, it's probably no surprise that the 0845 and 0870 numbers most ISPs use will be excluded from the £20 a month deal, as will calls over an hour in length.
Not only that, but as The Register are reporting, the product will not be available on a wholesale basis, so other telcos will not be permitted to compete with it.
In the UK, BT owns almost all of the local loop (connections to consumers' houses), and is only now moving towards opening up to competitors under pressure from Oftel, the telcoms regulator.
It looks like UK internet use will continue to grow much more slowly than should be the case, and the demand for cable modems and other unmetered access technologies will expand rapidly.
Martin Burns has been doing this stuff since Netscape 1.0 days. Starting with the communication ends that online media support, he moved back through design, HTML and server-side code. Then he got into running the whole show. These days he's working for these people as a Project Manager, and still thinks (nearly 6 years on) it's a hell of a lot better than working for a dot-com. In his Copious Free Time™, he helps out running a Cloth Nappies online store.
Amongst his favourite things is Zope
He's been a member of evolt.org since the very early days, a board member, a president, a writer and even contributed a modest amount of template code for the current site. Above all, he likes evolt.org to do things because it knowingly chooses to do so, rather than randomly stumbling into them. He's also one of the boys and girls who beervolts in the UK, although the arrival of small children in his life have knocked the frequency for 6.
Most likely to ask: Why would a client pay you to do that?
Least likely to ask: Why isn't that navigation frame in Flash?
