5 years ago... Telecoms campaigner criticises ISP but blames Oftel

Muddy waters attacked... (no, not the blues man)...

19.02.99: The Campaign for Unmetered Telecommunications (CUT) has criticised Internet Service Provider ClaraNet's offer of huge discounts for dial-up net access, but has laid the final blame for the problem at Oftel's door.

ClaraCall, launched this week by ClaraNet, claims it can offer discounts of up to 40 per cent on BT standard local call charges, and so offer its customers far cheaper dial-up access to the Internet.

But CUT founder, Alastair Scott, branded the claims of 'up to 40 per cent off', as "cheeky". He said that comparing ClaraNet's discounted rate to BT's standard rate is not necessarily fair, given that many users could get discounts almost as great by connecting through alternative carriers, or even through BT's own discount services.

"For people who have cable it is only marginally attractive at best. I did some calculations for myself and found that my saving, based on pretty heavy usage, would only be about three per cent," he added.

19.02.04: The muddying of the waters in terms of obfuscated price models and bold claims about discounts and price comparisons has long been an issue in the ISP market.

The two main perpetrators have been Freeserve and BT, who have fought like cat and dog - leading BT to declare Freeserve has been guilty of "perpetual but redundant belly-aching".

The emergence of broadband has further complicated the issue, with companies falling out publicly over the definition of the word. Those with a 512Kbps offering took offence at those companies who were marketing slower connection speeds, such as 128Kbps, as broadband.

NTL came in for particular criticism - and it hit back with accusations of 'dirty tricks' in the broadband market.