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Technology Stocks : Dell Technologies Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: OLDTRADER who wrote (135826)	7/8/1999 10:55:00 AM
From: Shadow	Respond to of 176387

DELL News (REUTERS) INTERVIEW-Dell<DELL.O>starts French online service INTERVIEW-Dell<DELL.O>starts French online service By Neal Boudette, European Telecommunications Correspondent FRANKFURT, July 8 (Reuters) - Dell Computer Corp <DELL.O> said on Thursday that it had launched its "free" Internet access service in France, following similar starts in Britain and Germany. "We just went live last night," Gordon Ballantyne, director of Dell Online in Europe, told Reuters in an interview. The service, called DellNet, offers Internet access with no monthly fee or subscription charges. Users only pay the cost of local phone calls while dialed in to the service. Dell, the world's leading direct marketer of personal computers, plans to expand the service throughout Western Europe in the second half of the year. "We are looking at a very aggressive roll-out," Ballantyne said. He declined to say where DellNet would go next. In June he told Reuters that Sweden and the Benelux countries were high on its priority list. In France, DellNet has partnered with Excite@Home Corp <ATHM.O> to provide French-language news and content for its portal www.dellnet.com/fr. Users can download DellNet software for free. It works with Netscape, Microsoft Internet Explorer and other standard browser programmes. Dell has also begun installing DellNet software on all of its PCs. Ballantyne said it was too early to tell how many users DellNet had because the company expected most users to join the service after buying new PCs with access software pre-installed. "We won't be in a position to understand the take-up for at least a quarter," he said. The company started offering "free" Internet access in Britain in May, joining a host of companies such as electronics retailer Dixons Group Plc <DXNS.L>, whose Freeserve unit is now the largest Interent service provider in the UK. DellNet started in Germany in June. "Free" Internet services have revolutionised the access business in Britain and are becoming increasingly popular in other European countries because they are less expensive than subscription-based services. Freeserve, which Dixons plans to partially float, has drawn scores of imitators backed by retailers, banks and broadcasters. They have also been a hit in Spain, where even former monopoly phone company Telefonica SA <TEF.MC> has switched to a free offering. In Germany, free providers have had more modest success against T-Online, a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG <DTEG.F>, Europe's largest Internet access provider. France may be another tough market for Dell and any other free providers because France Telecom SA <FTE.PA> is one of the few European telephone companies that offers unlimited Internet access for a flat monthly rate. France Telecom also offers a "free" access option of its own. REUTERS * end of story *