Digital Media Manager HOWARD DAVIS gives his opinion of this week's

free-Internet-calls fiasco.

Just when we thought things couldn't get any worse for the UK Internet industry, AltaVista makes a cock-up so glaring that the rest of the industry appears effective by comparison.

Six months ago AltaVista offered, quite literally, to pay subscribers phone bills in a move that rocked the ISP (Internet Service Provider) industry. Tony Blair even gave them fantastic free PR by publicly endorsing the move as part of his vision of an Internet for the people.

This week AltaVista's managing director, Andy Mitchell, admitted that the offer had fallen through. Launched on June 30, 2000, AltaVista was supposed to roll out this service to 90,000 a month. It was only when Internet news site The Register looked into the unmetered access issue that they found out that AltaVista did not have thousands signed up as claimed, but no-one at all.

Shambolic and farcical are two words that spring to mind. Typical is another. Typical of the gung-ho mentality of the get rich quick Internet boom.

Granted, the internet is a fluid medium, constantly evolving and moving quicker than any media that has gone before. But this should be no excuse for phantom offers to just get ditched quietly when their viability is found wanting.

Such an offer should not have been made in the first place.

With an industry like IT, which is universally accepted to be ridden with pit falls, any new undertaking should be deemed feasible before the launch party is planned.

When the internet boom first began ISPs diverted funds into advertising instead of improving their service to meet the growing demand.

This is, again, typical of an industry Andy Mitchell (AltaVista's MD) describes as 'a fiasco'.

There's nothing concrete, nothing tangible in the internet world, therefore, nothing seems real.

Just like Nick Leeson, gambling away millions of pounds - money which did not even seem real to him.

And not to let BT off lightly either, it is their Big Brother style monopoly which means that ventures such as AltaVista's work in the US, where phone tariffs are reasonable, and fail in the UK, where they are extortionate. It will be next June before BT makes the local networks free.

So will other Internet companies learn from AltaVista's mistake and not make promises they can't keep.

I wouldn't bank on it.