AltaVista UK Withdraws Unmetered Service In UK

WhiteWash writes "AltaVista's UK branch is terminating its offer of unmetred access, and blaming BT for the trouble as the BBC says at their news page. This was a good deal that provided an alternative to BT's monopolistic unmetred access options. Where does Britain turn now for unmetred access?" We originally touched on this subject a while back, for more background info.

Comments

Re:Telewest doesn't count

[GregWebb]

They're not the only ones.

I'm online right now via Unlimited Freeserve Time, available to anyone with a BT line. This costs me 10 UKP per month, which I can (effectively) reduce by prefixing national rate calls with a dialler code. See, that £10 is technically buying that amount of national rate calls over Energis.

I've had some problems with a badly setup cache box on their system sending my firewall mad - and a POP server doing the same thing on a smaller scale - but in other respects they're good. No discernable difference in performance from normal Freeserve (perfectly good), but no phone bill.

I'm very happy with them and could recommend them to anyone else. Except, as a warning, that they're only taking 10,000 new users per week - took me 2-3 weeks IIRC to get added to the system.

Let Him Without Sin....

[henley]

Not only that, they are now blaming BT (My employer, #include ) for not providing the lines. Nice one Altavista.

I certainly agree that AltaVista's finger-pointing at BT is a desperate attempt to avoid blame for this unmitigated disaster.

Unfortunately for your illustrious company, however, it's a far too tempting target to shoot at. Regardless of the reality, the widespread perception is that BT is still a monopolistic quasi-governmental organisation with an inherent belief that the population of this little island should be gratefull for any morsels it happens to throw their way. You only have to look at the ADSL roll-out for a prime example (and ISDN before it) - BT won't even quote which *year* my exchange is going to be enabled, because I have the gall to live outside a megalopolis. Not that the so-called competition is helping one iota; you only have to look at the availability vs. penetration of cable-modem for that!

So you can certainly see where the temptation to "spin" this story came from... It's not like this result doesn't favourably affect BT after all - all those disappointed AltaVista users turning to the only other supplier of unmetered access in the UK (no prizes for guessing the company... Starts with a "B")

Regardless, in this instance it was wrong to attack BT. Just this once, mind!

Re:Note:

[beebware]

Yeah - I haven't even seen evidence that would suggest that if they had the phone lines, AV had the equipment to cope.
I'll be trying NTLWorld shortly for unmetered internet access, but I'll also keep my Demon account active - they're due to have 'SurfTime' offerings soon.
More details can be found at the following Register articles:

• AltaVista admits service a sham
• Alta Vista's world crumbles
• AltaVista mystery ends today
• AltaVista: the silence continues and the farce continues
• CMGI to buy ISP for Altavista

And the list goes on... And that's just from 1 source - talk about publicity...
Richy C.
--

FreeServe

[stu_coates]

Where does Britain turn? Well, FreeServe are offering unmetered use for a flat 10GBP a month!

Not withdrawn at all

[scrutty]

It never existed. They claimed that they had successfully rolled it out at the start of June , and were implementing a "staggered roll out" over the hundreds of thousands of pre-registered users who had signed up for it( the deal was pre registration only). Presumably the "staggerered" bit was to convince anyone that had not been contacted with details of how to access the service yet to think that they were part of a later stage of the process.

The entertainingly cynical UK tech website the register has been running an entertaining campaign over the last few days appealing for any real user of the service to come forwards. This has been building up in the media, until finally AV admit the service is totally phantom, as are the happy satisfied users that they have been referring to in previous press releases.

It was all an out and out lie. And now they are trying to pin the blame on BT ( the now privatised, previously state-owned telco that has a near monopoly ovet the UK tel infrastructure). This despite the fact that there are other (admittedly smaller) ISP's who are successfully offering a similar service right now.

I wonder what Alta Vista are going to do with all of the user data they collected for pre registration ? Donate it to charity perhaps ? [hollow sarcastic laugh]

The state of the UK ISP is a real mess. I have just moved house ( I live in Bristol ) and I can't decide what the best company / route is for connectivity - DSL and cable modems are both real soon now vapourware in this part of the country, BT changes tack every two minutes , and smoke and mirrors tactics like this AV stuff make it even more confusing.

Alta Vista got a hell of a lot of PR for this in the UK, government commendations, newspaper front pages etc. I feel that their behaviour over this is criminal, and I would like to see them punished

Re:AltaVista the bad guy? No, it was BT.

[Paul Johnson]

BT was the bad guy. Has been for a long time.

Briefly, BT is regulated by Oftel. However when BT says "this is hard to do" Oftel says "OK, how long will it take you". This is not a recipie for getting things done that BT doesn't want.

In this case BT has two major cash cows: leased lines (GBP 1000/month for 64kbits) and per-minute charging on voice and ISDN lines (a penny a minute upwards). Oftel, the EU, the UK government and just about everybody else want to knock these cows on the head because they are blocking the widespread uptake of the Internet. BT wants to keep them.

This has manifested itself in two main ways:

• BT has been blocking the growth of cheap ADSL for years, arguing that its very difficult to do. It's also blocking co-location of DSLAMs by competitors on the grounds that crosstalk problems are very difficult to solve. Oftel is not arguing with this, or at least not very loudly.
• Its been blocking any kind of unmetered tariff. This is what bit AltaVista. BT originally tried to introduce its own "surf unlimited" package with unmetered connection to BT Internet (its own ISP). Oftel cried foul, and declared that if BT was going to give BT Internet an unmetered package then it had to give the same package to any other ISP. BT duly promised to do so, and has since put the introduction date back several times. Alta Vista have just got fed up with waiting.

The only dodgy thing that AV did do was to pretend that their service was up and running with 10,000 users. The Register has the story so far.

Paul.

AltaVista the bad guy?

[tolldog]

From what it sounds, AltaVista was the bad guy in this situation. They promised big, provided nothing, and when people started to complain they started pointing fingers. One out of three is a bad practice to get into. Two out of three shows lack of thinking or disrespect for customers, but all three of them... I am shocked.

I thought that only in the USA could we get stomped by some faceless giant. Don't we own a trademark on that or something???

Typical BT really

[stephenbooth]

BT is still in a real monopoly position in the UK, within the local loop (the copper running from exchange to peoples homes and offices) they have virtually no competition aside from a few cable TV companies who are still in the process of connecting people for their core business.

Later this year BT are supposed to be 'unbundling the local loop' but it's a case of I'll believe it when I see it!

Those unmetered services that are available (for example my local cable TV company (Telewest) run an unmetered ISP for thier cable TV subscribers) are so heavily over subscribed that they are having to stop taking on new accounts cos they physically can't get the hardware in place fast enough to service the demands.

To quote one of BTs own operators in a conversation with me in summer of 1992 "Well, it's [BT] not an honest company.".

Stephen