AOL to offer 0800 access – if it gets BT wholesale deal

AOL UK wants to hand BT a wedge of cash to secure unmetered access to the Net for its 600,000 members in Britain. Speaking in the Sunday Business newspaper, Clare Gilbert, VP and general counsel AOL Europe, said: "It is my view that it is now a question of when -- and not if -- unmetered access will happen. "We have put together a proposal for the UK using an economist's model. This has been put to BT through one of our network providers and this is now being discussed internally," she said. A spokesman for BT said today he was unaware of AOL's approach. Only last week, Andreas Schmidt, AOL Europe's president and CEO, said the British UK economy would suffer long term damage unless the country changed its policy towards charging Net users for every second they spent online. Schmidt's words of warning came less than a month after AOL UK indefinitely postponed plans to introduce its own 0800 access package because of the regulatory framework in Britain. ® Related stories AOL UK users strike back AOL users are revolting