Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the founder and owner of easyJet, will be opening the first in his chain of Internet shops called easyEverything at 12 midday on Monday June 21st at 9-13 Wilton Road, Victoria, London SW1. Opposite the main entrance to Victoria railway station, the shop has 400 computer terminals spread over 10,000 square feet, making it the world’s largest Internet café. As an introductory offer, customers will be invited to ‘surf all you like’ for £1.

easyEverything allows consumers cheap and easy Internet access. On-line shopping is expected to be a major attraction since everything that can be bought in a shop can also be bought on the Internet, but at reduced prices. At the same time, customers can use the Internet for accessing all types of information, sending e-mails or simply surfing.

Café Nescafe, an affiliate company of Nestle, has won the concession to sell coffee and snacks at the front of the easyEverything@Victoria shop. This is one of the few similarities with existing cyber cafes which tend to be small and run by nerds for nerds. EasyEverything@Victoria will be open 24 hours a day.

For the uninitiated, uniformed tutors are on hand who, for a small supplement, will teach people how to use the Internet or access on-line bargains. But there will, of course, be room for the experts and people who have access to the Internet at home or in the office. After the introductory offer, easyEverything prices will start at £1 an hour, undercutting the BT peak rate local call charge and making easyEverything cheaper than the so-called ‘free internet access’ deals.

easyEverything@Victoria has state of the art hardware including flat screens and fibre optic communication lines which means that downloading information will be much faster than from a home system. Add in the economies of scale of 400 terminals and 24 hour opening, and easyEverything brings down the price of both shopping and accessing the Internet.

Hewlett Packard is supplying both hardware and software to easyEverything. 2000 units are being supplied, 400 of which are in easyEverything@Victoria. The other units will supply a number of easyEverything shops that will be opening in central London this summer. All easyEverything shops will be in central shopping areas.

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