Kingston hails success of unmetered Net access

Hull-based Kingston Communications is claiming that its policy of offering unmetered Internet access has been a huge success - and that other telcos will be forced to follow suit.

In March this year its Internet business launched a service where customers pay a monthly subscription of £15, and a one-off charge of 5.5p each time they go online - regardless of how long they're connected.

Since then, Internet traffic has grown to represent more than one-fifth of all its call traffic, according to Kingston.

Last year, BT said having unmetered Internet access was not a viable business model. Kingston claim its recent healthy financial results show otherwise, and Kingston MD, Anita Pace, believes it's only a matter of time before other operators will follow suit.

Pace said: "I think at the end of the day it's going to be down to what the market demands, and as the Internet becomes an everyday part of people's lives they are going to demand untimed online access. Paying per minute is going to become unacceptable and it is going to be up to the telcos such as BT to get behind untimed access."

The company has also doubled the number of new customers joining up each month - a figure that was fast declining before the service launched due to competition from Freeserve. Kingston also reported that users were now staying online more than three times longer than before.

Erol Ziya, co-founder of the Campaign for Unmetered Telecommunications (CUT), agreed: "This shows that our position is technically and economically possible. BT said last year that it wasn't, but this adds impetus to our case."

He added that when asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) is unrolled next year, BT will have to consider new pricing models for dial-up Internet access because, for many users, accessing the Internet on a 56Kbps modem could end up costing much more than the £20-30 flat monthly ADSL fee.