Dateline: 11/27/98

Update: Unfortunately, a worse than expected advertising market has helped end almost all really free Internet access services including NetZero.

Can it be true? Free 56K Internet access with a national scope seems like a pipe dream, but it is real and available now from a company called NetZero. Free access on a small scale has been available in some localities for a long time in the form of local non-profit freenets. There have also been other attempts in the US to get free commercial ISPs off the ground but so far all have failed to achieve enough customers to sell the amount of advertising needed to stay afloat.

NetZero launched in late October 1998 and has very rapidly expanded access numbers to a level rivaling some well established fee based national ISP's. I was very surprised to find a local number I could use from my small hometown two weeks after the service went live. I've now been using the service hard for two weeks and you are about to hear what I think of it.

In three words -- I'm very impressed. The setup was easy and painless. My connection rates and data throughput are higher than the well respected local fee based ISP I normally use. I've even learned to live with the ad window on my desktop and the occasional pop-up window which checks to see if I'm still sitting at my computer.

Here is how NetZero works and how they plan to make money and stay in operation. You download software from their site which includes a dialer that makes the connection with their system and loads a floating ad window that resides on your desktop. They sell advertising that is displayed in the desktop window. It works just like ad banners that you see on Web pages. If you see something that interests you and click on the ad the advertiser's site is loaded into your browser.

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