Altavista was forced to eat crow Monday. As if the Web portal hasn’t
already had its share of problems, the latest caught-with-their-pants-down
episode revealed the company’s attempt at passing off vaporware to
consumers and the press alike. After weeks of badgering by the British
media, led by the irreverent IT rag, The Register, calling on AltaVista to prove its June 30 roll-out
of unmetered access in the UK, the deafening silence has finally been
shattered. Despite AltaVista’s press releases claiming that 100,000 British
folks were enjoying its flat-rate Internet service, a virtual manhunt
failed to turn up a single participant. AltaVista has finally relented,
admitting that its much-ballyhooed service never existed at all.
For millions of Web surfers in Britain, free Internet access is an
oxymoron. That’s because, while ISPs like Freeserve and America Online
may offer free Net
access in the UK, Britain’s local telcos don’t offer unmetered phone
service like in the U.S. So, eliminate the $20 monthly Internet access fee,
and for Britons, that still means per-minute telephone usage charges
applied. So much for free.
AltaVista stormed the barn with its March 2000 announcement to provide
unprecedented unmetered access. Half a million consumers signed up for the
USD $90 per-year service; but by the June 30 deadline, AltaVista admitted
that it could only manage a controlled roll-out of 90,000 users. And that
was the last anyone heard, from either AltaVista or any users successfully
subscribing to the service.
Leaving the public with the assumption that roughly 100,000 UK Web surfers
were experiencing toll-free Internet access, AltaVista remained silent for
the next six weeks. Apparently, only AltaVista’s UK managing director, Andy
Mitchell, could comment on the particulars, and he’s been
not-so-coincidentally on holiday for the past three weeks. Arriving back
just yesterday, Mitchell announced to the public that the decision to
terminate the project was made three weeks ago, just before his hiatus. If
not for the efforts of news publications like The Register hounding
AltaVista to answer claims that its flat-rate access was nothing more than
a hoax, the ruse might still be ongoing.
Mitchell places all of the blame at British Telecom’s feet, charging the
phone company with not offering competitive enough wholesale packages to
ISPs to make flat-rate Web access a viable option. But the fact remains,
all this bad press could’ve easily been avoided had Mitchell set the record
straight three weeks ago. Chances are, AltaVista was hoping no one would be
the wiser; and no one likely would have had the press not taken the issue
seriously.
This latest blow runs deep for the last major Web portal standing yet to
tap the public markets. Parent company, CMGI ,
pulled AltaVista’s IPO plans earlier this year, in favor of waiting until
the monolith was closer to achieving profitability, hopefully sometime by
Q4. After having to delay its planned $2.8 billion offering, in the
meantime, AltaVista hatched plans to unload its European operations into an
offering of its own. The notion quickly made a U-turn, and not a moment too
soon, in light of the storm of criticism now raining down on AltaVista, for
its UK unmetered access debacle.
Any questions or comments, love letters or hate mail? As always, feel
free to forward them to kblack@internet.com.
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