1999: Is BT Holding Back the Internet in Britain? | Newsnight | BBC Archive

Jeremy Paxman reports on the current price of accessing the internet in Britain. Calls are charged at the local rate, but some users - like the competitive internet gaming "clans" who compete in online multiplayer games like Quake - spend hours a day online. At a recent European Quake tournament, a LAN (local area network) was set up for competitors, due to the prohibitive cost of competing online. Newsnight speaks to two competitive gamers, "Acquiesce" and "Dodgy", about the realities of online gaming in the UK, where pay-per-minute calls and expensive ISDN lines can leave professional gamers with quarterly phone bills of over £700.

In the United States of America, there are no charges, and critics are calling for British Telecom to follow suit, to stimulate e-commerce and remain competitive in the internet space. Paxman chairs a studio debate between David Phillips, the Managing Director of AOL UK, and Dr David Cleevely, founder of the telecommunications consultancy Analysys, about whether British Telecom's practices are holding back internet adoption in Britain.

Clip taken from Newsnight, originally broadcast on BBC Two, 9 June, 1999.

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