Phones hit by Net overload

Pacific Telesis has published a study of Web use aimed at persuading the US Government to move Internet traffic off the voice network.

The company also wants the Federal Communications Commission to rule that ISPs should be charged for access to the local telephone network, claiming it could lose as much as $150 million over the next five years if the system remains unchanged.

Pactel told the FCC last month that ISPs should be charged about a cent a minute for calls from their customers, to fund the shift of Net traffic to a dedicated network. Currently, ISPs are exempt from the fees that long-distance companies pay local telephone companies for access to local lines.

Its study shows the percentage of Internet users whose connections remain active 24 hours a day is growing. Pactel believes the situation is aggravated by flat-rate pricing schemes that encourage users to stay on-line.

According to James Gardiner, Marketing Manager at Demon Internet, there is no such problem yet in the UK. "We don't have free local calls in the UK or the critical mass that they have in the States. Moving to a high-speed data network is not necessarily the answer in the States. Really they are just moving the bottleneck elsewhere," he said.