North Rock Communications announced lower rates for Internet access, a week after Fort Knox Bermuda launched FKBNet at lower prices than other Internet service providers (ISPs).

A no-frills service, branded "therock.bm", does not include many of the perks of North Rock's original Internet service, but its packages are between nine and 38 percent cheaper. North Rock has renamed its original service, with rate plan intact, "northrock.bm".

Fort Knox's chief executive officer, Troy Symonds, said the price war he was anticipating between ISPs had begun, although Vicki Coelho, North Rock's sales and marketing manager, said her company had been planning on introducing new services for a while.

But in introducing the new service, North Rock has eliminated what some would say is its most significant competitive advantage against start-up ISPs hoping to lure away customers with lower prices. Customers who opt for North Rock's cheaper Internet service will have to change their e-mail address suffix from northrock.bm to therock.bm.

Many users are reluctant to change ISPs because they don't want to abandon their e-mail address.

"If they were really serious about offering this to their regular customers, they wouldn't put them through the inconvenience of changing their e-mail address," said Jane Mullett, the marketing manager of Transact, which became the third company to offer residential Internet service when it began operations in February.

Ms Mullett speculated that North Rock was not keen to cut revenue, but was trying to keep customers who might consider switching to Fort Knox and would have to change their e-mail address anyway. Mr. Symonds, of Fort Knox, also figured that North Rock wanted to keep customers on the older, more expensive plans.

But Ms Coelho said the new domain name, the term for e-mail suffixes and website addresses, was all part of branding the no-frills service. She said that switching addresses "had not been an issue" for customers who had enquired about switching their package after North Rock made an e-mail announcement on Monday. North Rock's new service will provide customers with one e-mail address instead of three, and will not include a personal web page (between 50 and 100 North Rock customers presently use theirs), junk mail filtering or virus screening. Ms Coelho said North Rock outsourced the latter two services to other companies which charge on the volume of mail processed.

But she does not expect therock.bm customers to be deluged with spam, even though they will not be protected. She said "spammers" had only recently discovered northrock.bm and other Bermuda domain names, whose subscribers became targets for unwanted marketing, so presumably it would take them a while to discover therock.bm.

North Rock's new services are comparable to FKBNet's packages, although its customers can use three e-mail address and pay for extra ones. They can also buy virus protection. Ms Coelho said North Rock would consider offering similar services depending on customers' responses.

The day of North Rock's announcement, Transact changed its $99.95, 100-hour Internet package to an unlimited package. North Rock's unlimited package costs the same, but Ms Mullet said Transact was more interested in competing with other ISPs on service than on price. The company's Internet customers receive five e-mail addresses instead of one, for instance. Logic Communications, the Island's largest ISP, has not changed its pricing structure, but began a print advertising campaign last Friday to promote the company's multiple services, which also include long distance and calling cards.

The company's CEO, Jeff Hamill, said Logic was monitoring its competitor's price changes and "will probably have a response at some point in the future," though he would not say when.