CompuServe Inc. will launch its new online service, called Wow, on March 25 and charge just under $18 a month for unlimited use, including access to the Internet.
The pricing heightens the competition in online services. It is $2 lower than what AT&T Corp. has offered its long-distance customers for unlimited use of its Internet access service, which began Thursday, and substantially less than charges for what CompuServe's main online system and peers such as Prodigy and America Online charge.CompuServe executives said Wednesday they decided on the unlimited pricing after surveys of online users found those who were charged a flat fee for a five-hour limit rarely exceeded that limit.
"If you look at the current pricing models, they discourage high volumes of usage," said Scott Kauffman, general manager of Wow.
At a time when other companies are folding their online services or adapting them to the Internet, CompuServe has designed Wow to be different by focusing on home usage.
It will not have much of the technical content that has made CompuServe's main online service popular with businesses and computer enthusiasts. Wow will have news, sports, weather, business and entertainment information, e-mail, shopping, chat and full Internet access.
The company has designed the access software to work with new computers that have CD-ROM drives and sound and video capabilities rather than older systems.
The software will only run on PCs that use Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 95 operating system, but a version for Macintosh computers will be available soon. The company does not plan a version for computers that run Windows 3.1, the majority of PCs now in home use.
"Windows 3.1 would be useful to us only as a going-back exercise and this is all about going forward," Kauffman said.