Red-faced bosses at Bradford-based communication giant Yorkshire Cable have admitted turning the information superhighway into a cul-de-sac.

The company has been forced to pay refunds to thousands of its Internet subscribers, furious at persistent delays in getting on-line.

So many people subscribed to the firm's "free Internet" offer last month that its network overloaded. Would-be surfers were greeted with the engaged or unobtainable tone at busy periods.

Now, the company has sent letters to customers apologising for what it calls "a temporary bottleneck".

In the letter, customer services manager Rebekah Richards admits that users "may have found it difficult to access the Internet".

She says customers will receive a refund of up to £5 and have their first month's subscription waived, "as a gesture of goodwill".

The letter acknowledges that connection problems still persist, but promises: "We are adding more capacity to our networks on a daily basis."

Yorkshire Cable's parent company Telewest launched its free Internet service, Surf Unlimited, last month. For a subscription of £10 a month, plus another £10 spent on ordinary calls, customers could connect to the Internet for free.

But the offer was quickly eclipsed by other "free Internet" offers from the American firm Alta Vista and rival cable company NTL.

NTL, which operates Huddersfield's cable network, will offer its customers completely free surfing from April 17, without any monthly subscriptions.

The company is also offering free surfing to customers outside its cable network for a one-off charge of £10 plus a minimum monthly spend on non-Internet calls.

Alta Vista, meanwhile, is planning to limit the number of subscribers to its network, to avoid congestion problems.

The Yorkshire Cable debacle is a further embarrassment to the company following its admission last month that it had doubled the cost of some Internet calls without telling its customers. That mistake also led to bosses paying compensation.

A company spokesman claimed feedback from its Internet users had been "very positive", but acknowledged: "The popularity of Surf Unlimited has caused our cable Internet service to become congested at certain times of the day.

"To deal with this we are more than doubling capacity in our network."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.