Cheap Dial-Up ISPs Gain Ground

prostoalex writes "PC World takes a look at the proliferation of sub-$10-per-month Internet service providers and notices that the market for low-priced dial-up access is actually up in this weak economy. The low rates, with $4.75 per month quoted as the cheapest, are not abundant with features, and many of the dial-up providers don't give you an e-mail account or Web space, but it seems to be a plausible option for many. But reliability is a big issue, since 'about 20 of the startup ISPs [...] shutter within a year.'"

Comments

Logon

[Talisman]

All you need is a way on.

As for e-mail, you can use Hotmail, Yahoo! or any of the other hundreds (thousands?) of free e-mail providers.

Or, use Cyber-Rights for free, SECURE, e-mail that isn't gleaned by the hosts for marketing info.

Newsgroups? groups.google.com

If you have a way onto the 'Net, all the other stuff can be had for free.

Tal

This is news ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing new in the UK - we have pay-as-you-go zero subscription dial-up ISPs. Had them for ages, due to the funny way non-geographic calls are charged. The receiver gets a cut, that's how these ISPs make money.

And frankly, the average browser user still only eats about 4kbit/s of bandwidth - you don't need broadband for many uses!

Re:This is news ?

[Nermal6693]

We had a similar system here in New Zealand, where calls were charged in some obscure way that the ISPs were making money from people dialling up. Telecom (the telco that owns all the lines) had some obscure deal with Clear (the competition, who use Telecom's lines) where if a Telecom customer called a Clear customer, Telecom would pay Clear something like 2c/min. We had about 5 completely free ISPs (which used Clear for their dialup lines) - you just dialled up and used the net! No ad banners, no platform restrictions, or anything. Telecom simply paid Clear for all the calls, who then passed the revenue onto the ISPs (Clear's a "good" company). Unfortunately, Telecom revised their interconnect agreement with Clear, and these free ISPs have disappeared.

Anyway, a standard dial-up account costs around US$12/month here. I have a 128k DSL account that costs around $35/month (half to the ISP, and half to Telecom, who owns all the exchanges). I wish it was faster but Telecom has decided that if you want anything faster than 128k, then you pay by the MB :( This pricing structure hasn't been revised for 4 years, but they're introducing movies over DSL later this year and will hopefully update the prices then.

I'm sure this was a really interesting rant :)

Cheap?

[Da Fokka]

In Holland we've had free dial-up ISPs for several years. They earn their money because of contracts of KPN, the main dutch telephone provider.

Here's a plug for mine

[AvitarX]

Here is a plug for the sub ten dollor ISP I use

www.flex.com

It kicks ass. Good News Access, webspace with no transfer limits (if abused reasonable measures will be taken).

Domain hosting.

No automatic billing (web form, pay as you go).

Nation wide Dial-up

My favorite though is Server side SpamAssassin filtering. I have my e-mail unobfuscated on Transgaming, and have signed up with a few companies, still no spam.

There is no Customer service (but great help pages and user supported forums). has a disclaimer saying that it is for the techsavy and will not accept current AOL users.

I currently use them for the occasional times I need dial up, and to host my email with good spam filter, and still don't feel too gyped.

In Australia

[Talez]

There has been a boon of cut-price, unlimited dial-up and DSL accounts through a wholesaler called Comindico.

You basically set up an account with them, order so many lines at each pop and they place lines at each pop on a nationwide number or local number.

The VISPs can then value-add to that service (news, webspace, email) or sell it as ultra cheap internet access (as low as US$8.95/month in some areas).

While the quality varies from ISP to ISP, they are usually fairly reliable so long as your ISP has ordered enough lines.

Who needs NetZero?

[usotsuki]

I prepaid $54 for 6 months of Internet access from System Resource in Niagara Falls. They're a small operation - only serve a two-county area - but they're easy to set up, and they kinda-sorta support FreeBSD and Linux. (I can connect both from Linux and Windows.)

That, for the math-impaired Slashbots, is $9.00 a month. With no proprietary software (no software at all!). Take that, NetZero and your proprietary, ad-driven, Internet Exploder-based dialers!

I'm sure if you look, you'll find something similar in your own areas.

-uso.

Hard to be an ISP...

[Lumpy]

Espically dial-up. I ran one back in the mid 90's and the 56K technology drove me to sell my customer base to a rival. non 56K dial-up is very easy to get running and maintain. if you can get users happy with 28.8 as a MAX then you can do it... espically cince T-1 connectivity is now cheaper at $690.00 per month for a 3 year lease PLUS your Backbone ISP fees... you're looking at around $900.00 a month for a cheap connection to support about 50 dial in modems. make that around 10 users per modem and you just might make it for that dial-in node.

if you HAVE to have 56K dial in lines then your modem costs just skyrocketed massively from $250.00 per modem to almost $700.00 per modem as well as your dial-in line costs. Making your operating costs basically double for that node.

I don't envy anyone in the dial-up biz anymore. customers calling to bitch about connection speed that dont understand why their wiring in their house or neighborhood is crap and causing part of it. and if you inch past the 10 users per modem you start getting complaints about busy signals.

undercutting to $4.95 sounds like a dot.bomb sales model. as that is making the margins too close for comfort.

I'm happy with access4less.net

[newtronic]

Although I have a cable modem at home, I use access4less.net when I travel. I don't use the pop mail they give you, instead various webmail clients work for me. Hotmail, my cable ISP, and a few others. 24/7 tech support, which I've never needed. No software to install.

It's only 5.95 a month. I don't have any interest in them, other than being a happy customer. It's nationwide, but I did find one place they didn't support with local dial up: the outer banks of NC. Access4less.net

Cost cutting

[NeoSkandranon]

There are several of these uber-cheap ISPs operating in my area. In fact, I have a neighbor who went with one particular one, which I was convinced was a bad idea. As it turns out, the service is reliable, decently quick (56k) and something like 12USD a month. Turns out though, one of the ways they cut costs is--no tech support. Whatsoever. If you need help, you have to call the fellow (it works like a reseller program, one guy resells for a national ISP) who set you up and hope he is clueful

As for cutting off the other things--webspace? It doesnt cost you anything until someone actually puts a website up. Of the thousands of customers we had when i worked at an ISP, only a bare handful of individuals, plus most of the business customers ever bothered to learn how to FTP (or "publish" if you're a frontpage person)

Access4free.com

[dheltzel]

This is hard to beat for low usage folks: http://www.access4free.com
- No ads
- works fine on Linux
- first 10 hours a month are free
- next 10 hours are $1/hour
- free again after that (max $10/month)
- no use, no charge

I setup my inlaws with a NIC (Larry Ellison's stepchild) and access4free for low-cost,low-maintenance access to email and IM.