CUT campaigned for a fairer choice of telecommunications tariffs for consumers—in particular, unmetered local telephone calls that the organisation said would allow the "full potential" of the Internet to be realised.
The campaign was cited as "a major driving force"[1] behind the introduction of unmetered Internet access in the United Kingdom.
[2] In January 1998, the European Union had opened to telecommunications competition, but by the end of the year costs still remained high, and little movement had been made on the provision of unmetered Internet access.
CUT organised the United Kingdom's involvement in a pan-European boycott of the World Wide Web that took place on 6 June 1999.
[11] AOL Europe had previously backed calls for unmetered access; in early 1999, the company asked the European Commission to end perceived anti-competitive pricing by Germany's former state telecommunications operator, Deutsche Telekom.
AOL Europe's then-president and chief executive officer, Andreas Schmidt, said that unmetered access would "fuel job creation and provide consumers and businesses with an unprecedented array of new choices".
The German Institute for Economic Research backed the view that Internet use in Germany was too costly, and that this was mainly due to the high price of local calls.
[4] On 5 June 1999—one day before the boycott—BT began to provide unmetered Internet access at weekends to users of its "Plan Unlimited" tariff.
[19] The cable operators' business model was subsequently emulated by many other ISPs, including BT Internet, LineOne, Freeserve, Tiny Online, virgin.net and ic24.
[1][5] Tim Richardson of The Register said, "Every single person who uses unmetered Net access in the UK is indebted to CUT.