By Kevin Murphy

British Telecommunications Plc will come face to face with internet service providers next Tuesday at a meeting with industry regulator Oftel to discuss Surftime, its proposed unmetered net access product. The telco will face questions from ISPs and lobby groups eager to discover the specifics of how Surftime will work, how it will effect them and – crucial in the light of Telewest Plc’s much cheaper copycat move earlier this week – why it will be so expensive.

Surftime is a retail proposition aimed at consumers and small businesses. Under the system, users pay BT a fee of 35 pounds ($56.50) per month for unmetered call-time. This will be the first time UK internet users have been offered the option of paying for call time other than by the minute. ISPs wishing to offer unmetered services under Surftime must use new dialup numbers prefixed 0844, which were created by Oftel for the purpose.

Two immediate questions have been raised by ISPs and users ComputerWire has spoken to. First, the vast majority of consumer ISPs currently do not charge subscription fees and instead take revenues from a split of the metered call charge under the NTS prefix 0845. The split between BT as originating operator and ISP as terminating operator is well established, if controversial, but it is not yet clear how the one-off monthly payment would be split between the two parties.

The second issue of interest stems from the infrastructure BT has put in place to make the tariff possible. The company said last month it will invest heavily in placing modems at local exchanges to get internet traffic off the PSTN and onto its IP network as soon as possible, thus reducing costs. This begs the question of what becomes of the ISP’s own modem banks – which would presumably become redundant if traffic is arriving digitally as IP – and how infrastructure investment, and thus pricing, would be affected.

Lobby group the Campaign for Unmetered Telecommunications, which welcomed the move as a first step towards cheap unmetered access, wants the price at least halved. Cable operator Telewest Communications Plc this week announced the same package, aimed at residential users, for 10 pounds ($16) per month, so BT will be under pressure to explain itself.