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The Return of Free Internet
valdean writes "Remember the days of ad-supported dial-up Internet access from the likes of Netzero and Altavista Free Access? Those days, and the business model that supplied them, are long gone... or perhaps not. A new effort is being explored by California-based FreeFi Networks. Last week, the company launched what will be a nationwide network of ad-supported wi-fi hotspots. Ads will appear in what FreeFi calls a "narrow, persistent band of content" across the bottom of the user's screen. To provide incentive to America's coffee shops, they'll share advertising revenues with the hosting venue. Has 'free Internet access' finally arrived?"
Has 'free Internet access' finally arrived?
Here where I live (EU, Czech Republic), we have had companies offering free access to internet for free for many many years. So your question should be rephrased to "Has 'free Internet access' finally arrived in the US?"
That's how 'free internet' worked here in Ireland; more correctly called 'no subscription internet' where you were instead charged the cost of a normal local call, and the ISP got a cut for terminating the call. Freeserve in the UK was the first 'free' ISP in Europe following this model I believe, although the market has now swung more towards flat-rate and then broadband.
but free dialup has been very common here in Sweden for 2-3 years now. Ever since broadband took off the companies provide anyone who wants with free dialup - only pay the phonecharge.
Hell, there are several places where you go to a webpage, click a button and boom they provide you with a username, password and phone# to call. All without having to provide a single shred of personal information.
I enjoy large posteriors and I cannot prevaricate.
Besides the problems with forcing the ads, how will they make sure the person sitting across the street can't read your email? That's a big issue, imo.
With public access wifi, capturing the airbourne packets is probably gonna be very easy. And no-one notices you, because your notebook will simply function as a 'radio'...
Ofcourse, using tunnels (w/IPSec) and TLS will provide the neccesary encryption, but unless you always 'phone home' and use your home intenet connection, privacy will be an issue.
And ofcourse, there's the banners. The only thing that I can think of that will work is some mangling proxy that adds a frame on each and every page. And even that is very simple to bypass. But it _does_ mean a direct internet connection is not allowed, because most services are not meant to have banners injected to them, or even incapable of transferring them.
Thus, when they indeed only use a web proxy, I cannot classify as 'free internet', because the web isn't the Internet.
I'd just sit back and wait til it comes, then take a look at it again. It may not be as bad as described above, but it still could ofcourse.
Please submit an article when it is actually _working_.
I am not so familiar to the dial-up ISPs in Sweden now, but a few years ago they got all their incomes from the calls. For example, Tele2 had modem pools with free Intenet access. One would use Telia's (the now partly privatised national phone company) phone lines to call them. Telia would charge you per minute (about 1$ per hour for a normal call across the entire country) and pay Tele2 a bit to receive the call on their lines leading to the modem pool.
Prior to this the way to make money was to have a prequisite on these "free of charge" services - you had to sign up on their international and long distance calls services.
In Sweden a governmental organisation called Post- och Telegrafistyrelsen, PTS regulates how much teh different networks and telcos can charge for their calls and call transfers, and telcos' business schemes adapt to these rates, but in short the general idea is to distribute the end user's money to the companies offering different parts of the phone/computer -> destination services.
That way you would use Telia's phone lines to connect to the ISP/phone operator's lines that would in their turn do the final long distance or international call.
Internet access has always been cheap in Sweden even in the dial-up times. I currently pay about 300kr (40$) a month for a 10Mbit/s Ethenet connection, the house is connected to a X GBit/s city network, with an option for 100Mbit/s for around 10$ more a month, but with a cap at 800GB transferred a month at that rate, after which it falls back to a slower speed.
There are no additional fees from the ISP and most give you POP3 email, a couple of email aliases and sometimes a small amount of web space.
Not totally free, but pretty close to it (and no adverts either).
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I remember using NetZero before, and I did something (what, exactly, escapes me) where I popped open taskman and hit 'end task' at a specific point during connection -- or something -- which allowed me to have free internet access without any ads. It worked great for fullscreen activities like Diablo 1 and Starcraft (shows you how long ago I was pulling the trick).
Google is not in the business of free internet service provision. Their business model is utterly different to what your parent is talking about.
Google is, in essence*, in the business of
a) Content Provision
b) Advertising
to run an ISP for free is a fairly difficult proposition. I have friends in the business and they provide "free" internet, but in the end someone has to pay up - in the case of pubnet, the pubs pay, and the punters surf for free. What I'm saying is the money has to come from somewhere.
* simplifying
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
serving web pages is so darn cheap
That really depends on how popular the site is, of course. A heavily hit site like microsoft.com or google is going to have to invest a fair amount in hardware, network infrastructure, etc, in addition to any bandwidth charges they incur. I wouldn't be too quick to write off the potential cost of serving web pages (although admittedly, in the case of MS especially a fair chunk of their bandwidth bill is going to be due to file downloads rather than just straight serving of pages...)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I love how people think they are entitled to the work of others.
Really are the ads on Slashdot so bad. When I read Circut Cellar or CycleWorld I actually value the ads. Never know when I will see a good deal on a new Helmet or development system. I have even gotten some good out of the ads on slashdot.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
If you're in the UK checkout uk2.net. They offer free dialup and email and seem to be staying in business. I've been using their free email service for a couple of years and I've often used their free dialup when a modem connection is all that is available to me and I need to download drivers or software; just enter the number, type any username/password and you're connected.
Input error. Replace user and press any key to continue.
This is not new, check out the original free community network.