By Ben King, 15 July 2002 16:42
NEWS Kevin Wall, the boss of ISP RedHotAnt, has been jailed for five years. Ironically 29-year-old Wall was jailed for VAT fraud from one of his companies, JAK Productions UK Ltd, rather than the dodgy deal he sold RedHotAnt subscribers, who shelled out £30 for what they were told would be a year's worth of free dial-up internet access. RedHotAnt's dial-up lines soon became permanently engaged, and requests for a refund were rarely successful. The service was officially suspended in January 2001. A Customs and Excise spokesman compared him to Al Capone, "except that he was done by the VAT and not the Internal Revenue Service, or whatever it was called in Al Capone's day". RedHotAnt was one of many companies, including AltaVista and Breathe, which tried to launch unlimited access products but simply couldn't make the numbers stack-up while BT was still charging them for every minute their customers spent online. No one could make it work, until BT launched its Friaco service, offering ISPs an unlimited tariff product they could sell on to their customers. Wall went out of business with millions of pounds worth of debt. His companies owed £5.5m to MCI WorldCom, £6m to Level 3 and £1m to Cable and Wireless.
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