06/15/99

Adding to the swirl of service offerings available today is a new breed of national ISP - the "free" model.

Many experts are touting these services as great backup accounts. When dealing with complex telephone company switches and Internet connections, bad things can happen to good connections.

When all else fails, some of these "free" offers may be worth having in reserve - especially when conducting business or time-sensitive transactions over the Web.

Here are some of the "free" offers available to North Texans:

*NETZERO

www.netzero.com

Now the nation's 10th largest ISP, this 5-month-old company was the first in the United States to hand out accounts in exchange for the right to send you advertising. So far, consumers seem undaunted by the ads. The company claims to have signed up more than 500,000 people thus far.

Data on customer satisfaction is hard to gauge for a company this young. It is one of the first free offerings to hit the American Internet. In Europe, where metered telephone access has stifled Internet usage, this model is making huge waves.

FLASHNET

www.flash.net

A locally based ISP that is going national, FlashNet is giving away "Web computers" that have an unspecified Pentium processor, 64MB of memory, 56 Kbps modem, two e-mail accounts and a 14-inch monitor with two- or three-year subscription agreements.

FREEWWWEB

www.freewwweb.com

For a one-time software purchase of $119.90 ($59 at Staples and other selected electronics store outlets), the newest free ISP on the block will hook you up with local access numbers for most major metropolitan areas. Company CEO Steven Daum says he can afford to make the offer by subsidizing the delivery costs with targeted ads for users.

"We are clearly approaching the point of mass-market penetration," Mr. Daum says. "I think the world greatly underestimated the impact of the Internet on both business and life in general."

Suddenly, he says, an ad-driven, free-access business model finds itself able to compete. The company now claims 100,000 subscribers.

"And I think one of the reasons we don't have 10 times that number yet is just, by nature, American consumers are a very leery bunch," Mr. Daum says. "They just don't believe it yet."

- Doug Bedell