By Polly Raymond, 16 November 1998 17:16
NEWS Cable & Wireless Communication (CW&C) today launched a revolutionary ecommerce service that allows Web consumers to charge goods and services to their phone bill. Analysts have welcomed the service saying it could give consumers the boost they need to start spending seriously on the Web. Beth Barling, analyst at Ovum, said: "It sounds really revolutionary - there will soon be many more of these billing aggregation services to choose from. You could even have a situation where telcos become banks." Dave Birch, director of Hyperion Consultants - a top ecommerce consultancy - also added his endorsement saying: "There are a huge number of opportunities associated with using the phone bill in consumer ecommerce. It's definitely a growth area." The service, developed between C&WC and US payment developer Echarge, works by charging a different phone rate to a user when they are downloading or accessing goods and services. When a browser gets to a Web site where they can pay for the content, the modem automatically disconnects and re-connects the user to a premium rate. C&WC then syphons off the difference and pays the content owner. The obvious disadvantage of the service is that it targets only those users with a dial-up line - mainly home users. A business user running ISDN or higher connections cannot use the service. However, a spokesman for C&WC said: "This service is only designed for the residential user - a lot of content is of value to home users who so far are being put off because of fears like credit card fraud." He also acknowledged that the re-connection could cause delays. "But it's no worse than the normal delays you experience through a phone line. The delay is there but we've made it soundless with our system."
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