The Return of Free Internet 260
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?"
Depends on where you live (Score:5, Informative)
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?"
Whap happens when... (Score:5, Informative)
Do you not pay for the phone calls? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Should it? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Return? Feh - it never left. (Score:1, Informative)
maybe off-topic (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Free wifi internet, free packets? (Score:3, Informative)
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_.
Re:Return? Feh - it never left. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
UK dialup (Score:4, Informative)
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).
Heh... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not really free (Score:4, Informative)
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 [pubnet.com.au], the pubs pay, and the punters surf for free. What I'm saying is the money has to come from somewhere.
* simplifying
Re:Free wifi internet, free packets? (Score:3, Informative)
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'...
At public access points I always use a Proxy Server, and I always use one at work also - added bonus - I can look at any pages I'd like to and not worry about hitting something NSFW.
All the Admins would see (if they were snooping) is an encrypted SSL session between by browser and a remote web site.
I'm currently using MegaProxy [megaproxy.com], but a Google search [google.com] reveals a large list of both pay and free services.
Re:Not really free (Score:4, Informative)
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...)
Re:Better analogy (Score:2, Informative)
We have had television network access for half a century now.
It has always been free (well at least some of it)
Come to the UK - we have a mandatory TV license which is non-free.
Buy a TV in the UK and you will have to give a name and address so that they can insure you pay it.
Even if you never use the Television set for anything more than watching your own DVDs you will have to pay the annual TV-license fee of just over 100 pounds.
(The money goes to the BBC who use it to fund their programming - in addition to selling their programs to other countries. I think it's pretty unfair, I'd love to buy a TV that was incapable of viewing their channels and not pay for the license, but it isn't possible).
Netzero and Juno free access aren't "long gone" (Score:3, Informative)
Timothy is often reposts previously posted news because he doesn't look first. In this case, he should have looked up netzero [netzero.net] and juno [juno.com], which are still around, still offering free ad-supported dialup access. They actually merged into one company, United Online, [unitedonline.net] in 2001.
The business model is to give away ad-cluttered free access -- which is limited to something like 10 hours per month -- and try to upsell you to their $9.95 and $14.95 premium plans, which do not install an ad panel.
Re:Not really free (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Not really free (Score:2, Informative)
There were two major Telcos in NZ, Telecom NZ, which is the monopoly provider of residential phone lines to the majority of the population, and Clear (now Telstraclear), which provided a few business lines and toll services. Telecom basically forced Clear to sign an interconnect agreement whereby the two companies would charge each other 2c per minute for calls terminating on the other network. Since Telecom was much larger than Clear, they were making money off the deal.
Then Clear set up ZFree, the first free dial-up ISP. Thousands of Telecom customers every day were making calls lasting several hours, terminating on the Clear network. Clear started making money off the deal.
A full description of what happened can be found at http://www.wlug.org.nz/ZFree [wlug.org.nz].
There was also a second ISP called I4Free, they had a revenue sharing arrangement with Clear.
Re:Not really free (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.cooltechzone.com/special_images/adim
http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/ad
in your AdBlock list. Much better...
Re:Not really free (Score:4, Informative)
Re:How? (Score:2, Informative)
They have a transparent proxy on port 80 which initially intercepts any web page access and pushes you to an AUP page which you have to click 'yes' on. Until you do this your IP is blocked outbound, afterwards everything works fine (esp ssh which I use heavily). Every now and then (5-10 mins) the transparent proxy responds to a random http get with a page of ads instead of whatever you asked for.
According to the manager of one of the bars they pay a monthly fee to harborlink but its "minimal".
If they make money on this model it seems about as reasonable as one could expect. I still occasionally see their ads and its real internet access. If I was really offended I could just tunnel thru ssh to my squid proxy at home and bypass the ads - but why bother.
Since many people will want to actually check mail (via POP3S, IMAPS, etc) a web proxy only internet service will hopefully go over poorly. If they allow https (which would be hard not to if they expect you to get your email via a browser) one can always tunnel (google for 'https ssh tunnel') trivially through an https proxy.
Two words. (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, if that blocks the ads, and the ads are on the same server that their connections are routed through, you're kinda boned.
The model is different (Score:3, Informative)
In Egypt, the internet is free for everyone who has a phone line. No ISP fees, no subscription (and no POP mail either, everyone uses Hotmail).
The trick is revenue sharing between the ISP and the telecom provider (either a government run monopoly or a private state-sanctioned monopoly). The per minute charge comes on the phone bill, and the fees are split by the ISP and telecom.
In the USA and Canada this would never work, since local calls are free, and no revenue to share.
Free WiFi has been here for a long time... (Score:4, Informative)