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Technology Stocks : Compaq -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Koligman who wrote (73382)	12/8/1999 8:45:00 AM
From: rupert1	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 97611

John: The never-ending saga of the cost of internet access in the UK (and eventually in Europe) is coming to a head. BT (British Telephone) have just conceded defeat and announced several flat rate, unmetered plans to come into effect in April, 2000. If you want to examine them go to the BT's site. Remember a pound sterling is about US$1.60. Unlimited internet access requires a fee of about $55 per month plus any ISP fee (most of them are free now) plus the normal monthly fees for telephone line rental, non-internet calls and others services. The reductions are enormous (remember that my monthly bill with BT was about $1,000) and will have a big effect on BT's income. But the extra internet use which the new tarrifs will encourage will be exponential and should be good for hardware, networks etc etc. AOL have already condemned the plan being still too expensive (it is twice as expensive as a comparable US plan) and I would expect that competitors of BT will come in with even cheaper plans. It will be inetestign to see what AOL will do. Recently it has won many new customers (like me) because it offers access at 1 pence per minute. But that is much more expensive than the new BT rates. In reading it up you will see references to OFTEL. This is the goverment agency set up to regulate the industry when BT was privatised. OFTEL recently announced its own web site to encourage BT customers to move from BT to competitors by providing an interactive comparison shopping questionnaire. BTW, Cable and Wireless - COMPAQ's new partner - is one of BT's competitors in the UK. As cheaper internet access spreads across Europe it should provide a very strong multi-year boost to all net-related companies.