ISPreview take a detailed look at the cost of unmetered for ISPs

Another problem existed with surftime; you had to pay two bills. One would go monthly to BT for the Surftime connection and the other to the ISP for their networks and services. This meant that a 24/7 connection could end up costing at least £25 per month, a cost people simply weren't prepared to pay.

With such a high price the Surftime option placed itself in the middle of dangerous ground. It wasn't appealing to the majority of users who just wanted simple net access and the same went for heavy users who knew they could get more for less elsewhere. Of course Surftime does have a more cost effective off-peak option and a 1p per minute anytime option, both of which work quite well.

However unmetered means unmetered and that's a flat fee for anytime access, not off-peak, but 24/7, which was the primary focus for most people. On this account Surftime failed to live up to expectations.

Then came FRIACO

Hands up who knows the Campaign for Unmetered Telecommunications? Not many, well for those who don't know, they have been working on all our behalves for many years to bring exactly what their title states. Seeing that people clearly weren't impressed with Surftime they put forward a rough plan for a system known as FRIACO (Flat Rate Internet Access Call Origination).

Working within the rules set by BT and Oftel, their plan was for FRIACO to be similar to Surftime, but give ISPs a choice when it came to purchasing bandwidth. The system was accepted during the last few days of May 2000 and suddenly it looked like ISPs would be able to undercut BT's option. Sadly C.U.Ts effort was a noble one, yet failed because it was still too expensive due to the inflexibility of the system and BT.

C.U.T claimed FRIACO had the following two key points:

• To give your Internet Service Provider access to BT leased ports, which will each typically accommodate six to twelve dialup users, for just over £400pa.

• To give your ISP access to the wider Internet it buys into a number of competing bandwidth operators offering wholesale access through FRIACO.

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