Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/1998/10/06/germans_to_boycott_net_over/

Germans to boycott Net over high dial-up costs

Don't mention the Internet -- I did, but I think I got away with it

By Tony Smith

Posted in On-Prem, 6th October 1998 16:14 GMT

A band of German Net users are calling on fellow Germans to boycott the Internet. Their target: Deutsche Telekom. Their complaint: DK is charging way too much for local dial-up Net access. The group, DarkBreed, wants Germans to refrain from accessing the Internet for 24 hours on Sunday 1 November. DarkBreed's preferred date seems an odd choice, but it the group claims Sunday is a day not of rest but of heavy Net use round their way. "Deutsche Telekom provides 5.1 million dial-up connections every day," said the group, quoting DK figures. "Assuming that each user spends only DM2 on a Sunday, the boycott will cause a DM10.2 million loss." As evidence of DK's high pricing policy, DarkBreed cited a report in German IT magazine CT which said heavy Net users in Germany pay up to 800 per cent more than US-based users. Actually, the mark-up is likely to be much higher, since many dial-up connections in the US are local calls and therefore free. DarkBreed took the idea from a similar move by Spanish Net users which, according to the German team, lead to a price cut of 60 per cent. ® Click for more stories