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Technology Stocks : COMS & the Ghost of USRX w/ other STUFF -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jhild who wrote (12533)	2/6/1998 3:42:00 PM
From: Moonray	Respond to of 22053

MCI Offering $14.95 Internet Services to Its Users Washington, Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) - MCI Communications Corp. is offering its residential phone customers unlimited Internet use for $14.95 a month, 25 percent less than its traditional plan, making MCI to the lowest-priced nationwide Internet provider. MCI customers will pay $5 less than the current $19.95 rate for Internet services if they also buy phone services from MCI. The discount was introduced on Jan. 1. The offer comes as the No. 2 U.S. long-distance company and other carriers offer special discounts and other measures to try to prevent consumers from leaving for a rival. ''The more products that a customer has with MCI, the longer they stay and the more revenue is generated,'' said David Trachtenberg, director MCI marketing. With the $14.95-a-month price, MCI's Internet service is less expensive than its main rivals's. AT&T Corp., the largest U.S. phone company, offers unlimited Internet use to consumers for $19.95 a month. AT&T also offer 10 hours of Internet use for $9.95 a month, with a $2.50 charge for each additional hour. It doesn't offer its phone customers a discount for Internet service. Sprint Corp., the No. 3 U.S. long-distance phone company, offers unlimited use to consumers for $19.95 a month. It also has a plan that charges $1.50 an hour, without a minimum number of hours. Sprint said it's test marketing a plan that offers customers a 10 percent discount if they order several Sprint services. At least one analyst is skeptical about the success of MCI's discount plan. ''I expect no impact on the broad (Internet) market,'' said Abhishek Gami, an analyst at Nesbitt Burns Securities Inc. ''People aren't going to be enticed by just that price.'' Customers believe ease of use and reliability of Internet service is very important, he said. MCI isn't offering the cheapest Internet service. Several private companies sell Internet access for as low as $10 a month in certain markets, although not on a nationwide basis, Gami said. Each is eyeing the burgeoning Internet market, which Gami estimates has 50 million to 60 million customers worldwide and is growing by as much as 60 percent a year. Some other companies are changing their Internet prices to ease the logjam created by flat-rate Internet prices. The common $19.95-a-month rate has prompted customers to stay online all day, making it tougher for other customers to log on. For example, after America Online Inc. switched to flat-rate pricing in 1996, it faced traffic problems as users hooked up and didn't get off the system. To avoid this, International Business Machines Corp. said last week it will begin charging an hourly fee on top of its monthly flat rate to Internet customers who stay online for more than 100 hours a month. Customers who connect to the Internet through IBM Internet Connection Services for less than 100 hours a month won't see their bills increase from $19.95. For every hour over that limit, they will pay $1.95. IBM's new pricing plan will go into effect April 1. Sorry jhild, Bloomberg stories are such a pain. They renumbered this one. A while back they put copy protection on, I have to save the page and use MS Word to edit out the HTML. Sigh..... o~~~ O