July 29, 2000 - August 5, 2000

News - August 5,2000

Tiscali + World Online = BIG ISP

By:mark @ 8:48:AM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Rumours from the Online world have stated that the mighty World Online could be planning to join with Italy’s Tiscali ISP (third largest in the country). This in turn could potentially create Europe’s second largest ISP and one that directly competes with Freeserve and the other big players.

The Italian company has ambitions to become a pan-European Internet Service Company and could put to use the 1.6 billion euros (970 million pounds) of cash that World Online has in the bank after its flotation in March. Apparently Tiscali had previously been in talks with Frances LibertySurf, yet pulled out.

Tiscali said it has 2.3 million active subscribers, most of which are in Italy, while World Online claims to have 2.4 million users, mostly in the Netherlands. Although the ISP does have a growing population in the UK, thanks to its new freecall packages.

It'll certainly be interesting to see how this all turns out, with more users coming online each day ISPs are having to expand or merge into bigger companies the world over. Yeah, Even in Iraq where new cyber cafes give you 9600Bps connections to their dictators website, HURRAY!

Totalise Unmetered

By:mark @ 8:35:AM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Net4Nowt are reporting that Totalise plan to go unmetered within the very near future.

The Marketing Director, Kaz Garnett said, “As you will have seen in the press recently, many packages have fallen by the wayside as they were commercially unviable. It has taken us some time to develop a package that is sustainable and offers the service you have come to know and expect from us. We are sure Totalise Telecom users will be more than pleased when they receive our email next week.”

We wonder how long it'll be before there are so many freecall ISPs that customers won't know what to do with themselves. Oh wait a moment, it's like that now =). We'll be reviewing several other freecall ISPs and updating some old reviews that now have unmetered, should help.

News - August 4,2000

Have your say - RIP

By:mark @ 7:24:PM - Comments (2) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

We've just been informed that the DTI (Department of Trade and Industry) have a questionnaire up for people to complete and send in regarding the new RIP Bill (Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act). Essentially the DTI wants to know what people think of the new bill (isn't that obvious yet?), you have until the 25th August 2000 to complete it.

The questions can be found HERE and we urge anybody at all concerned about their Online E-Mail privacy to answer the questions accordingly. Follow the page down for details of how to send your answers in, we've already done ours =).

The more people that do it the better the likelihood we can at least see some more secure changes come into place. However ISPreview may well publish a way to avoid the system altogether very soon, it’s public domain information and so shouldn’t be of any great concern. Even officials have published the details; we'll simply put it into a tangible form.

Clear up the complaints

By:mark @ 7:02:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Sadly the ISPreview team is not an all-powerful invincible mass of information, although we do our best =). So we need a little help from our readers now and then, this time it's to do with the complaints page.

We can't test all the ISPs and don't like to keep long standing complaints up unless we continue to hear of problems (RedHotAnt etc.). So if people could check over the complaints page and report to us if issues that used to exist have got better or have been resolved, that'd help!

E-Mail me directly please.

Intensive Networks Unmetered Live

By:zeon @ 6:26:PM - Comments (7) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Intensive Networks have e-mailed us to say that their unmetered access is now live. They have a range of options through BT Surftime including one option which comes with a static IP and no cut-off for £114/month. This makes it quite a cheap sort of leased line. More info HERE

Telewest Blueyonder Price Cuts

By:Ross14 @ 5:48:PM - Comments (1) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Telewest's broadband service Blueyonder is in for a price cut, The Register reports.

The Chief Exec of Blueyonder Adam Singer has confirmed that an announcement could be made as early as this Monday. Just how much they will be reducing the cost by is speculative, but last month The Register reported that a third could be cut-off the current price of £50.

This is really good news for the consumer in cable areas. Non-cable users like me are hoping for a reduction in ADSL and ISDN soon - please :)

Source: Net4Nowt

ic24 unmetered package?

By:Ross14 @ 5:41:PM - Comments (1) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

The free-time ISP ic24 may be launching their very own unmetered service this October.

Net4Nowt say that an employee of ic24 emailed them with a hint that ic24 will be launching an unmetered package at the end of October.

N4N contacted ic24 and got a reply saying, "they do not have any further information on what would be offered."

ic24 recently announced extended free 0800 net surfing from 8pm - midnight weekdays, on top of their current 9am - 5pm weekend service.

Announcing Professional Statistics

By:mark @ 2:31:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

We're looking for some people to help test our http://www.prostats.co.uk service, it's a website tracking system a lot like thecounter.com. I wasn't going to mention it yet because it's not quite ready for beta (pages missing, content errors, small layout issues etc.) and so reporting errors is no good if it's not considered code complete anyway.

Either way if you have a website then you can help us test it just by signing up and placing the code on your site. The image icon that gets displayed is below our standard 'Stattrack' one at the bottom of this very page. At the moment we don't expect it to be official for another two weeks to a month.

It's possible that the system could change completely by then, until that time we'll be working on fixing the core issues that should be obvious on several pages/areas. This system accurately tracks unique visitors and pageviews very well, full statistics and graph output etc.

*Update*
For those less able to comprehend the basics of web design, you often use 'fill in content' when the final stuff doesn't exist. So especially for 'mike', everything you complained about (registered version, ISPreview being Ltd.) is not valid. This is one of the reasons we don't usually allow comments on general updates, there's always one idiot.

Telewests Freecall Assessment

By:mark @ 9:23:AM - Comments (5) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

The CE @ Telewest, Adam Singer, has today put in his viewpoint of overcrowded freecall ISPs, namely his own - see if you agree:

"Surf Unlimited is a good example of Telewest's ability to resolve problems associated with the launch of new hi-tech products,"

"We underestimated the demand and faced the same issues that are now plaguing other providers of unmetered Internet access."

"We fixed them, quickly, and we now have 155,000 subscribers and very high customer satisfaction ratings by any measure."

"By way of specific example: We average 225,000 dial-ups a day currently. Of those, 300 will fail to connect first time because of a busy signal. That represents a 0.13% failure rate and compares with 13% busy signals in March."

So how do those of you using their service feel about this? Is it true or just a load of [insert profanity here]? Lets not loose sight of the fact that 300 is still a lot of people, although we hate to speculate on how many can't login to the likes of RedHotAnt per day =). Checkout the rest @ The Register.

Cable & Wireless Go Cable Modem Mad

By:mark @ 9:16:AM - Comments (5) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Cable & Wireless, now overtaken by the mighty NTL, have been spitting out rumours of a planned introduction for Cable Modems to the service:

"The C&W (NTL) built in cable modem works perfectly with your PC, trials have been ongoing with 150 subscribers in Manchester since May, rollout begins in the Northwest in 6 weeks time for £20 a month."

£20 a month!? That would make it cheaper than almost every broadband in existance and freecall ISP. The rumour spreader concerned goes on to say:

"This is only available to customers using the DiTV1000 (Di4000)designed for Cable & Wireless Communications, it is the world's first digital set-top box integrated with Cisco Systems' DOCSIS-certified cable modem deployed into customer homes. Using Liberate Technologies' software, the box enables Cable & Wireless customers to access high-speed Internet. NTL Digitalplus subscribers have a Di4001 Digital Cable Box (DVB Only).

C&W Digital subscribers will be notified via C&W Interactive in early September. No online links as yet are available, NTL is planning a complete overhaul of cwcom.net before the launch."

It's not yet clear just how true these rumours actually are, especially since September is only a matter of weeks away and nobody ever made a deadline in the Telco industry yet =). For more head over to CableNews.

News - August 3,2000

Demon Lose Credit Card Details

By:mark @ 6:28:PM - Comments (6) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

With all the recent lapses in security we're hearing about it's sometimes easy to forget that you’re physically vulnerable (reality) as well as virtually (online). Or to put it another way, everybody’s so worried about hackers that they forget to lock machines up, which invariably get stolen - hurray!:

"Who'd have a credit card these days, eh? Yep, next up in the oh-dear-I-divulged-all-my-customers'-financial-details stakes is Demon Internet.

This time though is wasn't a case of appalling online security but an old skool burglary. One of Demon's buildings in London was broken into and a PC containing "a few hundred" credit card details was stolen.

A Demon spokeswoman assured us that it wasn't a big deal - the PC contained only test file information, most of which is apparently dummy information. The PC contained credit card numbers and expiry dates but no customer names, making use of the information extremely difficult. It was also encrypted.

However, the company did contact those affected (makes you wonder how it knew who they were), informed them of the theft and suggested they seek advice from their credit card companies."

The Register goes on to say how several people have already taken the action of cancelling their card, wise indeed. Crime is extremely 3Dimensional when it comes to ISPs, you can be attacked from all angles and so it only makes sense that you should protect everything.

Still another day and another crime, lets just hope Demon had the intelligence to use 128Bit Encryption like one of ISPr's readers recently pointed out.

AltaVista Unmetered Update

By:mark @ 6:18:PM - Comments (6) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Several of our readers reported the following E-Mail regarding AltaVistas freecall packages, sorry its taken me so long to publish it but I'm very busy:

"Dear AltaVista Customer

Since AltaVista made its ground-breaking announcement of its intention to launch an unmetered internet access package on 6th March 2000, the entire UK access market has transformed dramatically.

The Oftel ruling on Friday 26 May 2000 has moved the entire Internet pricing structure away from price per minute charging towards a flat-rate standard charge model. The implications of the change are numerous, but most importantly, the battle for Internet dominance will move away from price and towards quality of content and service.

AltaVista Unlimited Internet Access launched on 30 June, 2000, and is currently being rolled out to our list of pre-registered customers. So as to ensure the quality of this service, AltaVista has elected to rollout this service in a controlled manner. We will provide the service to as many customers as possible, as quickly as possible, whilst ensuring that your online experience is a good one.

So as to keep up with the overwhelming demand for AltaVista Unlimited Unmetered Access, and in response to research from MORI, the company has decided to launch two additional access services for you to choose from. The first is AltaVista Net on Demand, where you simply pay for the time that you use online. The second is AltaVista Freetime 20, providing customers with 20 hours of online time per month - customer signing on to these services will be automatically enrolled in the AltaVista Unmetered Access service, if they so desire. AltaVista will continue to rollout the AltaVista Unmetered Access service to as many customers as is possible prior to public availability of flat rate Internet circuits. Both the AltaVista Freetime 20 and AltaVista Net on Demand services are available immediately to whomever wishes to sign on at http://uk.altavista.com/isp . More information on these programs can be found at http://uk.altavista.com/help/isp/

We welcome you as one of the first subscribers to these exciting new offerings. For more information, please call 0870-876-7953 (calls charged at national rate), or visit the website given above.

Kind regards,

Andy Mitchell
Managing Director
AltaVista UK & Ireland"

The influence of ClaraNets quality ISP can be seen in some of the packages, although hopefully this won’t affect ClaraNets own services, which remain very high in the quality stakes. For those that missed a month here or there, ClaraNet are involved with AltaVista, although nobody can be quite sure to what degree.

In the wake of the recent news that BT may not be able to cope with all this extra Internet access, it’ll certainly be fun to see how yet another BIG ISP gets along. Will they have learned lessons from the past or just make newer mistakes? Either way, good luck to them.

UK Phone Network Can't Cope

By:Ross14 @ 10:40:AM - Comments (14) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

An article at Vnunet says that the UK Telephone System is not ready to cope with the demand for unmetered access, according to the head of the UK's largest ISP.

"Speaking at investment bank Robertson Stephens' International Investors Growth Conference in London this week, Freeserve chief executive John Pluthero said there is insufficient capacity in BT and cable operators' local exchanges, interconnect points and back-end systems to cope with a major shift to unmetered access.

"There's no way a significant proportion of the UK internet population could go on to unmetered tomorrow," said Pluthero.

Unmetered access is already widely available, although many services restrict subscriber numbers and some have withdrawn services because they were not financially viable.

The market is set to change from next month when BT, under instruction from telecoms regulator Oftel, has to sell wholesale unmetered accounts to competitors - a scheme called Friaco (flat rate internet access call origination). Most ISPs plan to offer unmetered services for fixed fees using Friaco.

Freeserve estimates that Friaco will reduce its monthly cost per unmetered subscriber from £30 to £8. But it will also place additional pressure on phone networks as people no longer feel the need to disconnect when they are not using their computers."

Bill Dixon, telecoms analyst at Robertson Stephens, said BT is still failing to provide what customers want, such as direct digital access and installation when they want."

So what do you make of it? We certainly agree with the last paragraphs statement. The rest of the article explains a little but more about Friaco and some more words from Freeserve's heads.

Read it all HERE

Lie Detector

By:Daniel @ 3:45:AM - Comments (2) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

We have found some Promising information about IC24's new after eight campaign.

"An executive at the Mirror's ISP, ic24, has taken a lie detector test to prove that the service really is free.

ic24's marketing director, Jill Playle, underwent the polygraph test to prove that the new "After Eight" campaign - providing free Net access between 8pm and midnight, Monday to Friday and
9am to 5pm at the weekend - is a genuinely free offer.

We at ISPr would love to question some un-named ISP's using a lie detector!

Read the full article at The Register

News - August 2,2000

RHA Customer Agony

By:Ross14 @ 9:21:PM - Comments (19) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

An avid ISPr reader, who surfs with RedHotAnt, has decided that his ISP's inability to sort out problems has resulted in him setting up a site. It asks other users to email him so as to collect names of customers who would be interested in presenting a united front against the diabolical service being received from RHA.

Nick is his name, and you can visit the site he has set-up HERE

He also refers to 'RHA' as Reliability Has Absconded, hehe. But, is this a good idea? Comments...

Test your connection

By:mark @ 1:39:PM - Comments (13) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

We found an interesting place under MSN (Microsoft Network) today that tests the speed of your Internet connection in real-time:

MSN Computing Central Speed Test v5.0

A clever page that people should find interesting.

BT Admits Surftime Billing Errors

By:mark @ 1:34:PM - Comments (17) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

A week ago we heard from several readers that BT was miss-charging them for Surftime, several news sites went on to report about it and BT denied any wrong doing. Well today The Register is reporting that BT have finally come clean:

"A week after BT denied it had cocked up the bills for some of its SurfTime customers, the telco has finally admitted that it made a mistake.

A red-faced spokesman for the telco admitted this morning that there had been a "breakdown on internal billing procedures" and that steps were being taken to make sure it didn't happen again.

He said that those customers who were fleeced would be refunded in full.

The billing blunder appears to have affected a number of Freeserve customers who had signed up to the flat-fee unmetered access service.

By forking out £5.99 a month to BT they should have been able to access the Net off-peak without adding to their phone bill.

However, the billing blunder meant that Net users were also charged for the cost of the local-rate phone calls.

An internal memo seen by The Register confirmed that the telco did indeed have a problem.

"SurfTime calls made during the period 1st June to 12th June may have been incorrectly priced as a result of a data error," the memo reads."

So where are we now? This must be what, BT's 30th screw up of the year so far? It's no wonder everybody is moving away from them and profits are falling if they can't get a simple thing like set monthly billing correct.

General Site Updates

By:mark @ 1:11:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

As we roll into yet another month the usual ISPreview updates spread themselves across the site once again. First to be updated is the Top10, which sees the likes of AOL and Vispa.Net forcefully pushed out by two new entrants, 24-7Freecall and World-Online by popular request.

The worst ISP for August has once again been given to RedHotAnt, who seem to have gone quite after failing once again to meet their "Sometime in the next three weeks" statement that they say almost every week. Trading Standards have promised to step in around this time if nothing is done, let’s hope they do.

The complaints page has also been updated seeing Visual Depth out of the charts after opening a new support line and the surprise entrant of 24-7FreeCall. 24-7 have apparently got random cut off problems with those on ISDN, we have yet to receive our review account and so can't confirm this. However there were enough complaints to warrant a mention.

As for last months survey, which asked, "What's most important to you in a website?", we had the following results:

Quick Loading - 42.8% (110 Votes)
Lots of content - 18.6% (48 Votes)
Simple Navigation - 16.3% (42 Votes)
Layout - 12% (31 Votes)
Consistent Theme - 7.3% (19 Votes)
Don't care! - 1.5% (4 Votes)
Stunning Graphics - 0.7% (2 Votes)
Resolution Site Made For - 0.3% (1 Votes)

Total Votes: 257

This months survey looks at the problem of credit card fraud and security by asking, "How do you feel about Online transactions?". Well that's it, you can also expect a new news comments system to arrive very soon and a polished new look for the main page.

UK Shoppers Nervous of Online Security

By:mark @ 8:45:AM - Comments (12) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Whenever you walk up to a cash machine or put your credit card across the desk to yet another store cashier, what goes through your mind? Are you worried somebody might steal the stores copy of your details or that the man standing right next to you is actually noting down the numbers? Whether the answer is Yes or No, we all feel like that at one time or another.

Today a National Consumer Council survey showed that people working over the Internet feel exactly the same way about Online shopping, only more so. Its research showed that almost four out of 10 adults see the need to release credit card details as a major disadvantage of Internet shopping.

Anna Bradley, a Council director, is quoted as saying:
"Unless the total online shopping environment is made more secure, some consumers will never have the confidence to explore the opportunities"

"Among internet users, more than half feel the same way"

Bradley said shoppers tried to minimise the perceived risk by shopping from online channels run by established, well-known brands and retailers.

"Around 28 percent of Internet users say they would look for a recognised brand name while 22 percent feel safer shopping on the site of a High Street retailer"

This comes only days after the first of two (another today?) security scares where people could see others details while using Barclays Online services. These fears are clearly not unfounded and so the question is simply, what is going to be done about it as nothing is 100% secure.

News - August 1,2000

World Online Suffering Again..

By:zeon @ 9:40:PM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

World Online is suffering the same problems it had for 8 weeks at the beginning of the year. They were hit with a service wide problem over the weekend when the router was being bombed by the DNS servers updating themselves. This caused the service to go offline from 1pm to 6pm on Saturday and an hour on Sunday morning. The router affected has now been taken offline but routing now in place is very slow. The status page which can be found HERE indicates that service should be back to normal tomorrow.

CIX Toll-Free Shut Down

By:zeon @ 9:18:PM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

CIX has announced that they will shut down their toll free service next Tuesday. A report on The Register gives a brief description of the problems suffered:

"According to one CIX user, the service has been plagued with problems with people being unable to connect to the service and dialler boxes being programmed incorrectly.

There are also unconfirmed reports that people just "abused" the system running up higher costs than CIX expected.

No one at CIX's Surrey HQ was available to comment on this when The Register called today, but it does seem odd that CIX would pull a product a month after launch unless something was not quite right.

The CIX Toll Free service was launched on Monday 3 July but at the weekend, CIX informed users that the service would be ditched next Tuesday.

It looks like CIX has been caught in the rush to launch its unmetered service and launched it too early. Hopefully they can come back with a better offer. Not a good way to operate an ISP though.

More ISPs & Telco's Report Serious Losses

By:mark @ 4:19:PM - Comments (0) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

These days investing some money in an ISP floating on the stock market, or anywhere for that matter, is a risky business. Freecall providers are pushing old hat FREE (0845) and Commercial (0845) ISPs out.

Even freecall providers are starting to be hit by the intense competition. Yesterday Thus (Telco) was the next to be hit The Register reports:

"Thus, formerly Scottish Telecom, has suffered the fate of Icarus as a profit warning issued by its ISP, Demon, wiped out 30 per cent of the share value. The company said that Demon had been hit by the explosion of flat rate un-metered ISP's. Operating losses rose to £18million compared with £4.6million in the same period last year, despite a six per cent increase in the company's turnover."

ISPreview has always predicted this would happen and it doesn't take a genius to see that. Every day the ISP trade grows increasingly confused and competitive, but could we be heading for a melt down and is this competition really giving people more choice?

ISP Services Without the ISP?

By:mark @ 4:09:PM - Comments (4) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

As anybody with any experience of the Internet and unmetered / freecall ISPs is aware, 70-80% of them are so bad that you can barely use anything, let alone the services offered. So when Charlie Orford (Head of Operations @ mynntp.com) came up with a way to offer fast services without the attachment of any specific ISP, we listened:

"As you are no doubt aware, unmetered ISP's have, to put it mildly, given their users an extremely rough ride as of late and it is now almost common practice for subscribers to unmetered ISP's to expect a poor service when it comes to mail and newsgroup provision.

There is an increasing trend for such disillusioned users to subscribe to free, advertising funded, third party mail and news solutions. While these solutions have not been totally adequate they have been a marked improvement over their ISP's offerings. We, however, believe that there is strong demand for a professional, all-in-one third party solution.

In short, our company aims to supply a comprehensive service offering mail (POP/Webmail), news (NNTP feed and daily headlines) and mobile (SMS/WAP) services. In contrast to the seemingly never ending tide of vapourware and advertising funded start-ups, mynntp.com will be a subscription based, "best-of-breed" service i.e. we are not aiming to offer a "bottom dollar" solution, rather our service is aimed at high end users who are willing to pay in return for a reliable, advertising free service.

We are currently in the final stages of securing private investment and are launching our pre-release site on Tuesday (1st Aug). This site is designed to explain to the on-line community the ideas behind mynntp.com and to give them a chance to register their interest in the service (commitment free). We are also running a competition to win a free .com or .co.uk domain in return for visitors taking the time to register their interest.

For more information about our forthcoming service please point your browser to: http://www.mynntp.com "

This is certainly not something we've seen done in quite such a way before, but then it's not a revolution either. The system offers the following:

Fast, full, unrestricted news server with over 45,000 groups (incl. binaries)
A full POP & SMTP e-mail account (can be used to send and receive anywhere in the world)
Secure, private e-mail (our servers will not be affected by the R.I.P bill)
Unlimited e-mail forwarding addresses (anything@username.mynntp.com)
Webmail (can be used with any browser)
Autoresponder/Vacation Message system
Ability to pick up your e-mail via a WAP enabled phone
Optional SMS text alerts when you have new e-mail
Optional free daily news and technology headlines direct to your mail box
Free on-line support (24hr response e-mail, tutorials and FAQ's)

Sadly all is not perfect, a charge of £3.99 per month or £40 per year does exist, some might call that expensive compared to the cheaper unmetered ISPs such as EzeSurf and RedHotAnt to name a few of many. However some people out there might find the offer to good to resist if the current spate of freecall ISPs maintains their level of service.

Poor News Comments

By:mark @ 8:43:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

We're going to be installing a new news comments system sometime in August (time providing) that will give us more control. It'll use a combination of cookies and IP logging along with the possible use of a login and password.

This is because several key figures in the industry have complained that several readers consistently post abusive and slanderous comments. So with some regret to the honest ones we have to integrate tighter measures.

The new system should also have some benefits, but don't expect it to be installed right away as I'm far too busy with real life work at the moment.

*Update*
For those of you concerned comments wouldn't be as open, they would, we are simply introducing measures to save us a lot of legal hassle. Under the new and stupid law tested with Demon Internet recently, sites in the UK are responsible for their reader’s comments (forums etc.).

Clearly the most un-educated law ever conceived and one, which could easily be undermined (Person who wants to sue posts sue able material under other names etc.), but it is a law and one we must try to adhere to. In fact the situation in the UK with security and law is now so utterly ridiculous that we are thinking of moving ISPreview to the USA.

Such a move would be radical but it's our belief that those who make up these new laws and systems haven't the faintest idea just what they are making them for.

ItDoesntMatter Online Update

By:mark @ 8:28:AM - Comments (5) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

The newly introduced ISP ItDoesntMatter has thrown up a temporary page while their main one undergoes some changes:

http://www.idmo.vt9.co.uk

The page also has some interesting news:

"There is going to be a special chat event here on Sunday 6th August with a representative from itdoesntmatteronline.com coming into the chat room for a special question and answer's session.

The representative is due to appear at 8pm and is expected to stay until late. Make sure you get here early to get a good seat!"

So whatever you want to know about this new unmetered ISP then that's the place to be.

News - July 31,2000

BT local Loop Unbundling Speeds Up

By:mark @ 8:00:PM - Comments (1) - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Some Two weeks after the European Commission published a draft directive mandating unbundling by the end of the year in a bid to accelerate the spread of high-speed Internet connections. Oftel has finally said it had published guidelines requiring BT to let competitors install equipment at its local exchanges within four months of an order.

"The timetable for transforming Britain's telephone wires into high-speed Internet links has moved forward with the regulator Oftel saying "unbundled" connections will be available as soon as January.

Oftel said next July remained its target for the wide launch of unbundled local loops -- direct links to the last mile of wire into homes -- but that it would force British Telecommunications to start connecting its competitors early in the new year.

Unbundling will allow BT's competitors to install technology at its exchanges that will transform copper wires into fast Internet pipelines.

It will give them greater flexibility to compete with BT's own ADSL -- asymmetric digital subscriber line -- connections, which BT expects to start installing for home users in October and November.

Oftel's latest announcement, and BT's delay in launching ADSL, means the former monopoly's head start in ADSL is fast shrinking."

The rest can be found @ Yahoo News, but this is indeed an extremely positive step. It presents the possibility of those normally unlikely to receive ADSL for another two years in a position where they could be using it inside 6months time.

It also means that competition between Telco’s will instantly hot up, right now not even ISPreview can predict what effect this will have on freecall providers.

Free Providers Hit Back @ Freecall Providers

By:mark @ 7:55:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Old news for ISPreview readers who likely already saw this coming months ago when we published our 'The Death Of Free ISPs' article about freecall killing off free (0845) and commercial (0845) ISPs. However Yahoo News have just published proof that we were indeed right:

"Free Internet service providers are losing out to ISPs which charge a flat fee but offer unmetered Internet use in the battle to sign up Web surfers.

Recent research from Analysys said the overall European market is set to more than double to 140 million Internet users in 2000 from 65 million in 1999, but quarterly subscription numbers show growth is lagging at many free Internet providers.

"If a customer is not paying for the service, he won't value it," said Jason Streets, Internet analyst at UBS Warburg.

Many users have a free subscription as a back-up in case their other ISP cracks up, he told Reuters.

"The quality of subscribers is much lower," Streets said.

Free ISPs offer users Web access for nothing, but customers then pay dearly for the telephone connection. In the unmetered model, users pay a monthly fixed charge but the call charge is then waived.

World Online, the Netherlands-based pan-European ISP which mainly offers free access, said last week it had raised its number of active users by just 200,000 to 2.4 million in June, from 2.2 million in March.

Freeserve, the British provider which pioneered free Internet access in Europe, painted an even grimmer picture when it said its number of active subscribers grew to 1.97 million in late June, up only 33,000 since late April.

What worried analysts most was that the company signed up new customers at a rapid rate, but was losing them at almost the same pace.

In the first three months of the year average sign-ups per week at Freeserve totalled 45,000, but active accounts only increased by 9,000 a week, indicating that 34,000 users a week were either leaving Freeserve or had stopped logging on."

The article also provides for a somewhat new insight, the fact that while unmetered is slowly pushing FREE (0845) and Commercial (0845) providers out of the loop, they themselves are along way from perfect. In fact so many freecall ISPs screw things up that as the article says, most leave a short while after joining =).

So the new race has begun, it's no longer about being the first to offer freecalls but instead about being the first to offer a service to those freecalls =).

Barclays Hit By Security Scare

By:mark @ 7:46:PM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Perhaps proof once again that nobody is safe on the Internet and the sooner people realise that the better. Today Barclays Bank became the next victim of technological security after several online accounts were breached:

"One of the UK's largest banks has shut down its Internet banking operation following at least four security breaches earlier today.

Four of Barclays Online million plus users were confronted with financial details of other customers when they logged in this morning. The service had been upgraded over the weekend and it appears that the problem occurred when two or more users logged in at precisely the same moment.

Two of the users phoned Barclays to point out the problem, but the others decided it would be more fun to tip off the BBC instead.

The new system was shut down and its predecessor brought back online. The bank says only four out of 85,000 customers who used the service were able to view other people's accounts and insisted that they would not have been able to carry out any unauthorised transactions."

You can find more on this over @ The Register, but it should be clear by now that putting your faith in that which you don't fully understand isn't always wise. Quite whether the breach was a system fault or the result of a third party (hacker) is not clear.

Dramatic UK Net Usage Rise

By:mark @ 9:43:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

NetValue is today claiming that more than a quarter of a million new UK Internet users have logged on since May'2000. NetValue said the surge in female surfers could be attributed to Euro 2000 as more women logged onto the Internet while men watched the football on the television.

Of these June users, 43.5% of surfers were women, with 4.4m UK women logging on to the Internet at home. The number of Females users in France has also grown by 358,000 to 2.2m, whilst in Germany female users account for 37% or 3.8m of the German Internet population.

Further, the research found that the number of British women accessing e-commerce sites in June was 2.8m, an increase of 400,000 users on the previous month. The most popular sites are books and travel, with StreetsOnline remaining the number one e-commerce site for both women and all Internet users. Expedia.co.uk ranks as the 7th most visited site for women, and Tesco.co.uk the tenth.

Certainly an interesting theory, but then why should they do that for Euro 2000 this year when they could have done it for the World Cup not long ago? Isn't it more likely that May also happened to be the start of various freecall ISPs TV Ad campaigns and general advertising push?

We honestly can't believe that so few people are able to pickup on that fact, Internet access is cheaper and more people will invariably sign up. Check out Net Imperative for more.

Contact RHA

By:mark @ 9:34:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Just a quick nibble of news, for those of you unable to contact because they have forgotten to change their 'Station ID' on the 'Contact us' page - use this number:

Tel 01303 775500

Thanks to Alistair for pointing that one out.

*Update*
That's the JAK number for the ISN support @ RHA, not RHAs direct line - sorry forgot to mention that.

News - July 30,2000

ISPreview Weekly Update

By:mark @ 10:03:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Another week passes and a new one is soon to dawn, its managed to be yet another eventful one as well. Concluded VisualDepth investigations (posting soon), Ex-EzeSurf employees allegations (page that first published them has now vanished), more ISPA > LineOne happenings and yet another new FreeCall ISP.

Internally and ISPreview has been reviewing more ISPs and preparing new articles for August. Not to mention we are looking at a new 'news comments' system + working on the Review/Article reader comments system and looking into several suggestions made by readers.

The biggest news is that we're changing our main pages layout, it's not going to happen soon as I'm piled high at work with stuff to do and just manage to update ISPr without getting totally stressed out. The new layout will fit in more with the page header and footer and should give a slightly more 'sleek' look to the site.

On the home front and I was sad to downgrade my Peugeot206 to a 106 because it can do 49MPG, that saves me some £12 per week on petrol. Anybody old enough to understand knows that Petrol prices are now utterly ridiculous and almost unworkable. If you drive a car then make sure you take part in the Boycott this coming week.

Well that's about it for this week, want to keep the other ISPr things under wraps for a little while longer as it's too early to reveal them. Although anybody using the 'Paid To Surf' system AllAdvantage should find their accounts open again. The real reason for the temp shut down was because AA killed a load of jobs off after profit losses.

News - July 29,2000

Virgin.Net To Join NTL

By:mark @ 9:32:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Our friends over @ Net4Nowt have some interesting news on how Virgin.Net and NTL are to join forces:

"The Financial Times newspaper has today reported that Virgin are close to agreeing a £240 million deal with NTL which would split Virgin.net into two."

There's more @ N4N but this would certainly impact the Internet services on both sides. This would instantly make NTL the 3rd largest ISP in the UK next to the likes of Freeserve. It's not clear as to exactly how this would benefit either NTL or Virgin.Net's customers, but we'll know soon enough.

VNUNet Suggest a Watchdog

By:mark @ 9:28:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

A rather interesting article has been highlighted over @ VNUNet (Credits to Net4Nowt who saw it first) that discusses the need for a 'GENERAL' ISP watchdog in the industry:

"After another week of frustration for unmetered internet users, calls for the establishment of an official ISP regulatory body have intensified.
For consumers desperate for information about delays and problems to a service, there is no real regulatory organisation in place. The limited powers of voluntary organisations such as the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) have also been questioned.

The ISPA, established in 1995, has argued for self-regulation among ISPs to avoid the hindrance of unnecessary legislation. It has developed a code of practice for ISPs, which addresses service quality, but ISPs are not required to join this body.

This week, the ISPA criticised Lineone for behaving in breach of its code of conduct after it stopped its unmetered service with telco Quip. The group told Lineone the matter was very serious and if the company did not respond it "undermines the position of ISPA as a self-regulatory body and calls into question Lineone's agreement to comply with the code".

Lineone said it has responded to the ISPA's letter and has addressed all issues and questions raised by the body. "Lineone believes it had addressed fully the issues, and has been fair and responsible to everyone," said a spokesman. "We will now wait for ISPA to examine our response."

Yet despite the ISPA's actions, consumers are still confused about who to turn to. If an ISP is not a member of ISPA, consumers can face a myriad of paths to go down. Consumers can complain to the Advertising Standards Authority, the Trading Standards Authority or Oftel.

The Consumers Association advises users to check if an ISP is a member of ISPA before it begins to use a service. "One way for consumers to check an ISP is through ISPA, but it offers no guarantee. The body hasn't got the capability to make huge sanctions," said a Consumers Association spokesman.

The UK advertising watchdog said it has received more than a hundred complaints against ISPs, with these figures growing each week. So far, complaints about cable operator NTL have reached 144, Lineone has attracted four complaints, while Madasafish, The Free Internet, 4Unet and Breathe have all received one complaint."

We quite agree with the article, it's one of the reasons we run a complaints system of our own that’s already impacted what several ISPs do. However we have no real power to act over our 'public pressure' measures.

Not to mention that the last paragraph is rather interesting, in total we must have had nearly 1,000 complaints, most of which have now been wiped clean. Somewhat more than their 'more than a hundred' figures (hehe one complaint about 4UNet, yeah right!) =).

We are only too happy to co-operate with any organisation set-up, if it's not then we'll likely have to propose one ourselves to dear old Tony Blair.

Breathe Refund Options

By:Daniel @ 1:36:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

Here's some good news about Breathe customer refund options.

"Dear Breathe Customer

After listening carefully to breathe freely users' comments expressed over the last few days we are offering some alternative options for you to reclaim the £50 you initially paid for the service. Please read the following carefully and reply to this email with your preference.

1. Receive up to £50 towards your call charges if you revert to using
the breathe everywhere local-call access service (0845 dial-up numbers).

2. Receive £50 towards subscription based toll-free access from
breathe to be launched during August.

3. Receive a refund of the initial £50 paid directly into your bank
account."

At least they have now given you a few options for your refund. We would recommend option 3.

Thanks to sully for this news.

IC24 Extended

By:Daniel @ 1:32:AM - - SendNews [HERE] / PrintNews [HERE]

IC24 was the second most true free ISP in the UK. Now they have extended their free online time.

They have sent out a email to all users saying:

"From August 1st to 31st October 2000 you can have completely FREE online time every day with our fantastic new FREE online time deal.

The current offer of FREE online time between 9am - 5pm every Saturday and Sunday has now been extended.

The new offer includes FREE online from 8pm until midnight every weeknight on top of the FREE online time 9am - 5pm every Saturday and Sunday!

Users are automatically disconnected after 60 minutes

Who knows they may even extend this like they did with their weekend offer!

Check out IC24's webpage @ www.ic24.net

Thanks to Christopher Fenner for sending us the email.