Cable and Wireless Internet Lite [17 September 1998]
On joining Cable and Wireless Internet you get, among much else, a leaflet about the new Cable and Wireless Internet Lite service.
Cable and Wireless Internet is the 'standard' service (£10 per month; normal call charges; five email addresses; 5MB of Web space); Cable and Wireless Internet Lite is the 'pay-as-you-go' service (no monthly charge; augmented call charges; one email address; no Web space).
'Augmented' is the nub of the matter! The charges quoted per minute are:
Cable and Wireless Internet 0.75p weekend, 1.11p evenings, 3.95p daytime.
Cable and Wireless Internet Lite 1.66p weekend, 2.5p evenings, 6.58p daytime after 30 November 1998 (until that date, same as the standard service).
When does Lite become more expensive than the standard service? Assuming no use during the day, 25% during the week and 75% at the weekend, which would be a reasonable guess at what most home Internet users do, Lite becomes more expensive, after 30 November, after just over 16 hours per month.
So Unlimited hours of fun on the Internet may well last until the first phone bill. Or, as one contact said, 'Lite-r than hydrogen'.
The leaflet does say that Lite is intended for the new or 'lite' user. Presumably users, when they exceed the 16 hour crossover point regularly, are left to find out for themselves that they're paying over the odds ...
You can download the spreadsheet I used to model the charges here (Excel 97 format; 10KB).
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