Business: The Prague Post Online

90,000 swear off Internet

By Ron Orol

Organizers of a one-day Internet boycott and management of SPT Telecom pledged to meet again to talk about modifying Internet local-access rates.

Internet activists met with SPT on Nov. 12 to discuss possibilities for a two-rate system in which voice and data lines would have different fee structures.

Patrick Zandl, director of MobilServer online magazine and an organizer of the boycott, said the meeting was ineffective and both sides agreed to meet again on Friday, Nov. 20.

That kept alive plans for a Wednesday, Nov. 18, boycott of the Czech Internet.

More than 90,000 people supported an Internet petition stating they would not use the Web on Nov. 18. Nearly 900 information technology companies also have joined with the activists, including Czech-based telecommunications firm Aliatel and Internet providers Sky Net and Bohemia Net.

SPT's own Internet provider division, which has more than 15,000 customers, also is supporting the boycott. "We will lose customers because of the rate hikes as well," said Michal Knor, SPT's manager for Internet services development.

Minister of Finance Ivo Svoboda also said in a statement that he supported the protesters and claimed he did everything in his power to keep SPT's rate increases minimal.

"SPT could set up their system where a customer must enter a special code at the beginning of the telephone number to identify it as a data line," said Ondrej Neff, director of the Web-based magazine Neviditelny pes (Invisible Dog). He compared the prospective system to the current "0800" numbers.

Neff and other activists said the monthly cost of running the Internet every day for an hour is 2,000 Kc and they want the cost to be cut in half.

Only 60 percent of SPT's lines are set up to differentiate between voice and data, Neff said.

SPT plans to increase local access telephone rates from 2.40 Kc for a three-minute pulse to 2.60 Kc for a two-minute pulse during peak hours. This means that SPT will receive 76 percent of the total cost of using the Internet instead of the 66 percent they have today, Zandl said.

Poland's Internet users also are planning a Dec. 1 boycott of Telekomunikacja Polska S.A., the state telephone operator in Poland.

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