PhoneLink Plc, the Birkenhead electronic information service company has unveiled Tel-Me 2.0, the second version of its flagship on-line information product, with added services and drastically reduced pricing. It has also conducted a survey of Internet use in the business community and warns of an imminent backlash from users because of the gap between its perceived potential and users’ experience of what can actually be achieved over the Internet. PhoneLink has provided an Internet gateway with the new product, enabling users to send electronic mail over the Internet free of charge. It does not see sufficient demand for other Internet services such as File Transfer Protocol in the business community at the moment. PhoneLink has added a mail engine which users can connect to in the same way they use other services; it can also be accessed via TCP/IP connections. The company now has around 5,000 subscribers, according to executive manager Roger MacDonald, and is still on schedule to hit its ambitious target of 100,000 subscribers by August 1996. Other new services include Roadwatch from the Automobile Association, which provides real-time road works information as well as a journey planner. Expo Tel-Me enables subscribers to book hotel rooms (CI No 2,619) and Postcoder generates post codes for addresses and vice versa. The most profitable part of the service for PhoneLink at present is the company profiles offered by CCN. PhoneLink also announced a six-year agreement with Worldspan Services Ltd for on-line flight reservations. Worldspan is jointly owned by Delta Airlines, Northwest Airlines, Trans World Airlines and Abacus Distribution Systems Pte Ltd. It will enable subscribers to confirm flight bookings where a credit arrangement already exists with a travel agent. As with all Internet transactions, the problem of payment needs to be addressed, and PhoneLink is happy to go with whatever credit card transaction system emerges as the standard, which will probably the Netscape and Mastercard intiative, according to Chris Knowles, group strategy and development manager at PhoneLink. Tel-Me 2.0 is ú50 for the software only and ú100 with a 14.4Kbps Fast Connect modem. The charge has been cut to ú10 per month from around ú25 and services including UK weather reports, company name validation and some news services are now free of charge. It will be available in May through PhoneLink, IBM Corp, Cellnet Communications Ltd, British Telecommunications Plc and over 100 other dealers.
