The European arm of America Online Inc said that it will start an ambitious program of investment in the hopes of trebling its subscriber base to 10 million by 2002. However, talking at the CeBIT technology fair in Hannover, Germany, AOL Europe’s CEO Andreas Schmidt claimed that the excessive cost of European Telecommunications might make that goal unobtainable.
Schmidt claimed that telecommunications costs were typically five times higher in Europe than in the US, which impacted on the costs that his company’s customers had to pay for AOL’s services. Schmidt said that the firm would be lobbying European and international parliaments to gather support for changes in European telecoms pricing structures. He refused to reveal how much AOL would be investing in its efforts to increase its subscriber base.
