This article was published in PC Plus issue 150 (April 99), and is reproduced here for information purposes only. This is the original copy which was sent to the magazine, not the subbed version which appeared on the page. |
Paul Stephens column, issue 150 (April 99)In this one, I said that free ISPs and unmetered local calls were great ideas, but that I hoped they'd both be temporary stages on the way to a permanently-wired Superhighway. |
|
|
|
[BEGINS]
<Strap> Will free ISPs
prevent progress towards free local phone calls? Paul hopes so, and that
the free servers last long enough to make dial-up links a thing of the
past. <callout> Free calls
would make dial-up links seem confusingly like permanently wired
connections, when in fact they're not like them at all. <body> I received an
interesting email this month in response to issue 148's feature on free
ISPs. The author argued that, while free ISPs are a nice short-term
money-saver, they're also a distraction from the long-term objective of
unmetered (free) local phone calls, as available in America and,
increasingly, across Europe too. When these arrive, he said, ISPs will
have to go back to charging monthly subscriptions, and the free ISP era
will be over.
For more information, my correspondent pointed me at the web site
of the Campaign for Unmetered Telecommunications (CUT), at
www.unmetered.org.uk. It's a very good site, packed with details of
flat-rate pricing developments in places like France, Germany and Eire,
news of 'internet strikes'
(people staying offline in protest at time-charged billing) in Poland,
Greece and Switzerland, and quotes from telecomms industry figures saying
that customers deserve to have free calls, countered by quotes from BT
figures saying that they deserve not to. It also provides answers to many
of the objections raised against free calls, such as 'they'll clog up the
lines and bar access to the emergency services', and 'why should ordinary
people pay for a few enthusiasts' Internet access'?
The campaign's underlying argument is that today's telecomms
networks are fixed-cost operations (high initial investments, low running
costs), and that customers should therefore at least have the option of
fixed-cost pricing plans - or, to put it less politely, that telephone
companies shouldn't be allowed to keep a pricing model based on pre-1960s
technology just because it happens to rip off the punters and generate
huge profits. As the campaign freely admits, it's an argument that's
really about Internet access rather than voice traffic, since the extra
flat-rate rental which we'd expect to have to pay would equate to more
by-the-minute speech time than most people could use without seriously
damaging their larynxes. Normally I'd be solidly in favour of such a campaign, but in this case I
have a reservation. The problem is that, while unmetered calls would be a
nice short-term money-saver, they'd also be a distraction from the
long-term objective of getting rid of low-capacity dial-up telephone lines
altogether, and replacing them with something that can bring a proper
Information Superhighway into our homes and workplaces.
Getting rid of open-ended, by-the-minute charges would make dial-up
links seem confusingly like permanently wired connections, when in fact
they're not very much like them at all. They're far, far slower for a
start, and connected to the Internet via banks of modems and ISDN adaptors
whose line-to-subscriber ratios can't guarantee first-time connections.
They don't give you permanent circuits or static IP addresses, or multiple
IP addresses on the subscriber side, so can't support the two-way,
push-technology, remotely-program-your-VCR functionality that the real
superhighway will one day give us. Such links are also not necessarily
flat-rate at all times, leaving the phone operator free to start charging
by the minute again when the clock strikes midnight.
The danger is that if dial-up links were suddenly made more
attractive, we might all settle for them as our medium-term route into the
Net. This in turn would inhibit investment in the broadband infrastructure
we really need, something that's progressing slowly enough already without
anyone else stamping on its brake pedal. The effect would be roughly the
same as if some bright spark had invented 100 mph cross-Atlantic liners in
the early 1950s, with lowish fares and a 30-hour journey time attracting
enough passengers to deter investors from backing the risky, unproven,
capital-intensive alternative of jet travel. When I think about the way things might pan out in the connectivity
market over the next few years, what really worries me is not that BT
might manage to keep on fleecing us by the minute for using local circuits
we've already rented. I'm far more worried by the possibility that it
won't, and that instead it'll do a mega-FreeServe and get five million of
us signed up for 'high speed' 128K access down its twisted-pair cables at
a flat-rate £19.99 a month. On that basis I think it's actually a good thing that BT's chosen to
price its Home/Business Highway at levels which amount to a calculated
insult to its customers' intelligence. Being asked to pay nearly twice the
standard rental for a line which is very obviously your old one with a box
of tricks bolted on, then twice the phone charge to achieve a data rate
one tenth that of a cable modem, isn't going to leave anyone under the
false impression that they're getting the best possible deal. If BT ever
gets round to rolling out ADSL (Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line), the
'super ISDN' that supposedly provides permanently-open, high-speed links
over phone lines but actually comes with more small print than a timeshare
contract, I hope it decides to over-price that too. Then we can forget
twisted-pair once and for all, and get on with installing the real thing.
Free ISPs probably will be a temporary phenomenon, but hopefully
not in the way my email correspondent suggested. By maintaining the
time-based charging model, they're helping to keep the distinction between
dial-up and permanent links nice and clear, which in turn will help to
ensure that what replaces them is a real superhighway infrastructure, not
the last-gasp profit-milking of outmoded telephone technology. For that
they deserve our gratitude, and a role in the brave new broadband world.
With their U.S. counterparts already pressing for legislation guaranteeing
them the right to sell Net access via cable networks, it looks like
they'll have one too.
[ENDS] (C) Paul Stephens 1999. All rights reserved.
|
|||
