Second site: No such thing as a free call

SO, WHAT are you going to modernise today? It might be your business plan, it might be your wardrobe, it might be your cat, but if you care at all about building a new Britain for the new millennium, you'd better modernise something. Or so we are coming to believe, without ever pausing to wonder why. The Internet is understood to be the life-force of modernisation, and so the idea is gaining ground that mere access to it is not enough. We have to spend as much time immersed in the modern ether as possible. An injection isn't enough. You need to be on an Internet intravenous drip.

National and personal success, according to e-belief, will be proportionate to time spent on-line. This is the reason why so many people are complaining about the cost of phone calls in this country. In America, the argument goes, local calls are free, so people stay on- line much longer: this helped the Internet take off in the States, giving the US a commanding lead in the race for digital fulfilment. Although the claim makes sense, it is a curious issue on which to hang anxieties about the nation's electronic aptitude. Free local calls would certainly turn up the gas of the digital economy. But the critical shift is getting on-line, not staying there all day.

When the Chancellor announced his scheme to refurbish old computers and rent them to families with members on unemployment benefit or the New Deal work scheme, for pounds 5 a month, there were those who objected that this would only drag the poor into the phone company's debt. Low-income users will certainly have to keep an eye on the clock if they are to make the best use of Mr Brown's helpful initiative. They should be able to get plenty out of the Net without adding hugely to their costs, though. Last month, my phone bill for Internet access came to pounds 7; and that's with a digital culture column to support. Keeping costs down involves sticking to cheap-rate periods, the best of which are the golden hours before 8am when America is off-line, saving Web pages to read later, and not wandering round aimlessly.

Surfing can get expensive; studying shouldn't be. Most people can afford a reasonable amount of time on-line. The really significant cost obstacle they face is the price of computers. British consumers will currently pay about pounds 400 for an entry-level machine. In the US, by contrast, customers can pick one up for about pounds 300. And pounds 300 is a lot less to the average American than it is to the average Briton. The United States' GDP, per capita, is 50 per cent higher than the United Kingdom's. It isn't free local phone calls that have won the Net for America, or even cheap PCs. It is the fact that Americans have more money.

Nevertheless, 40 per cent of British householders have found the wherewithal to buy a computer, and it is from these comfortable classes, not the poor, that the complaints about local phone charges are coming. Under normal economic rules, a shift to a US pattern of phone billing would favour the better-off, since the phone companies would raise rentals for everyone to make up the shortfall from lost local call charges.

Several Internet service providers have recently been dangling offers of 0800-number free access, but they have yet to convince a public that is in danger of tuning out, fazed by Internet deals that are becoming as difficult to compare as mobile phone packages. Computers and Net access for all would be a fine thing. Like cars, however, computers are status symbols; and as with cars, people may rather relish splashing out on the purchase, but will then begrudge the cost of keeping them running.

You can visit www.poptel.org.uk/secondsite for links to pages mentioned or contact Marek Kohn on secondsite@poptel.net