Stelios Haji-Ioannou, a European entrepreneur whose biggest claim to fame is UK airline EasyJet Ltd, which helped to bring so much needed price competition to Europe’s expensive internal flights market, now say he wants to bring internet access to the masses. Ioannou’s latest venture, easyEverything, has just opened the first 400-seat site in a proposed chain of five mass-access cyber-cafes.
The first cafe, located in the Victoria district of London, will be followed by outlets with as many as 900 seats in major urban centers around the UK, as Ioannou moves to cash on booming internet interest in the country. Internet service provider PSINet Ltd will provide the connectivity, while Hewlett-Packard Co will provide the equipment, in a deal worth almost $5m.
Nick Earle, chief marketing officer of HP’s Enterprise Computing division, said the strategy is to appeal to the 85% of UK citizens without net access, allowing them to shop online at the same time as they shop on the street. Use of the 24-hour service costs 1 pound ($1.60) per hour, which is cheaper than using a residential dial-up connection on a standard line during the day, but marginally more expensive after 6pm and at weekends. This is achieved by bulk-buying bandwidth from British Telecommunications Plc. Technical help costs an extra 1 pound.
Cybercafes first arose around London several years ago, but failed to take off in any major way. Ioannou thinks that by adopting a bulk-buy Wal-Mart style of retailing he can capture the burgeoning e-commerce market at a time when PC use is still fairly low.
