France Telecom Bends To Internet Protesters

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February 03, 1999 (1:24 PM EST)

By Madeleine Acey,

Internet boycotters protesting high telecommunications charges in Europe appear to have forced the hand of at least one national provider, following an eight-country strike Sunday.

France Telecom confirmed Wednesday that it would introduce a flat-rate fee for local calls to Internet-access numbers. France Telecom CEO Michel Bon said the move would have to be approved by industry regulators.

The Association of Unhappy Internauts had proposed a flat-rate monthly fee of $36 for unlimited local calls. The group said Internet discussion-group numbers were down by between 8 percent and 62 percent in France during the strike.

Bon did not say what the flat rate would be.

A France Telecom spokeswoman said the state-owned carrier had acknowledged France was behind in its Internet use and would have to catch up. She could not comment on whether the strike had any affect on the timing of the announcement.

Officials from the Campaign for Unmetered Telecommunications -- which organized Sunday's concerted strike in Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal, France, Belgium, and Poland -- said they were pleased with the results, though full figures for all countries had yet to be calculated.

Group spokesman Erol Ziya said Spain had an estimated 80 percent drop in usage based on its real-time chat figures. Usenet and e-mail figures in Portugal experienced a similar drop, he said, with an 80 percent cut in usage based on real-time chat and Web-page hits.

It would take some time to coordinate all the numbers for different types of usage in each country and translate reports into English, Ziya said, but he added the numbers were less important than the impact.

"It's got a lot of coverage, and all the groups are very happy," he said. "That's always been our aim -- it serves the purpose of making people aware of the issue."

The German national telephone company Deutsche Telekom also announced plans to cut charges after a December strike organized by the Dark Breed user group. And Spanish carrier Telefonica promised before Christmas to cut prices after 40 percent of surfers stayed offline in an action last fall.

Price-cut announcements were all very encouraging, Ziya said, but some were vague and lacked detail and timetables.

"It's fairly open-ended," he said of the latest France Telecom announcement. It's subject to regulatory approval, and that's a very real issue."

"The telecom companies are running a well-planned strategy -- they knew these changes were coming before a lot of users did," Ziya said. "But the longer they can delay, the better it is for them."