[erol]

The following info has been passed to me. At this moment in time it is still a 'rumour' and may not turn out to be ture. What is definately true is that from the middle of the year BT Wholesale will be introducing a range of wholesale DSL products that are metered by usage (and possibly by distance as well) in addition to their existing 'flat rate' wholesale products. These products will have a lower monthly fixed cost for ISP's but will charge for moving data from local exchange to ISP (middle mile) based on how much data is moved (and possibly on where it is moved from). These new products will undoubtedly lead to many more retail options for BB usage based on some for of pay as you go basis. So the Tiscali rumour is very credible in light of this. A bit of early mover advantage in this 'payg' market segment.

Anyway the rumour goes as follows.

"Tiscali UK is launching a pay-as-you-go broadband service later in the spring. The 512k services cost £19.99 a month (the same as BT's recently announced BT Broadband Basic) and give punters those choice of either 50 hours online a month or 1Gb monthly limit"
"Punters who exceed this limit will then pay just 2p per minute on the 50-hour package and 2p per Mb for the 1Gb package. Just in case consumers get carried away, Tiscali is capping monthly bills at £50 "

If this is true I would say this product is better value than the recently announced BT BB Basic deal - but still now where near as attractive as metronets payg deal.