Schools get cheap access to Net

Oftel, the telecom watchdog, yesterday cleared the way for a plan supported by the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to give every school in Britain cheap access to the Internet. The decision means that a programme drawn up by British Telecom to give schools what it considers to be affordable access to the information superhighway, could be in place during the next school year.

At the end of May, BT had said that schools would be charged pounds 790 a year for three hours' daily use of up to 15 computers. It said it was unable to offer lower charges because of prices it had to pay to use other operators' telephone lines to transfer calls to Internet service providers. But Oftel said yesterday that after negotiations within the industry it believed a deal could be worked out so that BT would be able to charge about pounds 665 a year. This would bring BT's offer closer to that made by many cable companies, of around pounds 1 per pupil per year.