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To: Sarmad Y. Hermiz who wrote (55246)	5/5/1999 8:19:00 AM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 164684

AOL <AOL.N> tests free calls to Internet in UK LONDON, May 5 (Reuters) - Britain's AOL said on Wednesday it was testing a new pricing package which gives subscribers free telephone calls when accessing its Internet service. AOL, a joint venture between America Online and Germany's Bertelsmann AG <BTGGga.F>, plans to offer the free calls to customers paying a monthly fee of 14.99 pounds ($24.4). The offer is expected to be one of a series of pricing packages to be tested by AOL. The move is seen as an attempt to recapture ground lost to rival service providers such as electrical retailer Dixons' <DXNS.L> Freeserve. Freeserve is subscription free but customers do have to pay the cost of local telephone calls connecting them to the Internet. Launched only last September, Freeserve is now Britain's biggest service provider with more than one million subscribers. AOL has just under 700,00 subscribers in this country. Underlining fierce competition in the sector, pay TV giant BSkyB <BSY.L> on Wednesday announced plans to launch its own free Internet Service Provider -- skynow -- from June 1. The announcement dented shares in Dixons, which have rocketed since the successful launch of Freeserve. Dixon shares were down 4.5 percent or 61p to 1,274p by 1035 GMT while BSkyB, boosted by plans to give away digital TV decoders to drive take-up of the service, added 41.5p to 583p, a 7.6 percent rise.