Global Price Drop

Global Price Drop — Global Village Communication recently reduced the access charges for its $2,000 OneWorld Internet 28800 product see TidBITS-258). The original hourly charge of $8.95 has dropped to $3.95, thanks to the addition in July of a nationwide access network like SprintNet or the CompuServe Packet Network (until July, the lower rates apply to the current 800 number access method). The per-user charge remains in place, starting at $49 for 10 users and increasing with additional users. In addition, the company now offers a $249 per month flat rate option to benefit high-volume users of the plug-and-play network Internet connection device. Customers may opt to switch plans any time during a month, although the switch then applies for six months before the customer can switch back. Although the price drop is welcome for new users and may make an Internet connection via the OneWorld Internet more reasonable for some small offices, we suspect the $249 per month flat rate option will be popular, given that "high-volume" equals out to only slightly less than four hours per day, which is nothing when you consider the amount of time necessary to download something like the 5.2 MB System 7.5 Update over a relatively slow 28,000 bps connection, even if you ignore the time spent trying to connect to overloaded servers. [ACE]