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The pan-European company will charge £39.99 per month to consumers when it launches broadband in December and £37.99 per month to customers who also take the World Online Telecom product.

The prices are equivalent to those charged by BT and Freeserve for their ADSL services. That's because World Online is using BT's wholesale broadband product Openworld. The service will run at 512Kbit/sec with 1Mbit/sec and 2Mbit/sec products

World Online is hoping to bring down the prices of ADSL when the local loop is unbundled sometime next year, when it won't have to rely on BT's wholesale product. It has already applied to BT to install its equipment in local exchanges.

Despite complaints to Oftel from other ISPs about BT's reluctance to open up the local loop, World Online thinks it will happen on time. "We expect to be able to get into exchanges in July next year although we are worried that BT may say it doesn't have enough room for us to install our equipment," said Andy Frost, director of broadband services at World Online.

The ISP is also being cautious about when broadband will become mainstream. It conceded that this won't be until around 2002. "We sincerely hope that broadband will be within the reach of lower-income families soon, although we can't really see prices coming down for at least another 12 months," said Frost.