Cable firm offers flat-rate internet

From today 4.5m homes will have cheaper access to the internet as a result of a move by Telewest to charge a flat £10 monthly fee for dialling up the worldwide web.

The decision by the second largest cable company, which is merging with rival Flextech, came as a new survey showed that such unmetered access could triple people's use of the internet.

Until now, users of the net have faced not knowing how much their telephone bills will be each time they log on.

The government wants flat-rate charging to become more common as part of its strategy to thrust the country to the front of e-commerce.

Patricia Hewitt, the e-commerce minister, said: "I warmly welcome Telewest's new internet offer. We want to see more flat rate internet services on offer."

Telewest's SurfUnlimited will be the first unmetered access to the net in the UK, although British Telecom is planning to introduce its own version of the service.

Telewest said it already had 15,000 of its 1.5m customers pre-registered for the service which it first announced last year. Telewest calculates that people using the net an average of 30 minutes a day could save up to £15 a month.

To register, customers would need to subscribe to a Telewest phone line, at a cost of £9.99, and use the number for £10 worth of conventional calls a month too.

According to research published today by Durlacher, a specialist e-commerce firm, the introduction of such charges would increase the frequency of people's internet access from their homes by 46% and the duration of their sessions by over 100%.

Durlacher's research, based on interviews in 4,000 homes, found that over a third of all adults now use the internet somewhere, either at work, home, university or school, while domestic use has risen to 17% of British homes from 11% last year.