UKNM: The 'free' in free ISP now a commodity

[Sam Michel]

I went to see the cricket in Nottingham at the weekend. Why am I telling

you this? Well, it happened that I drove through a goodly proportion of the

West Midlands on my way there. I saw Freeserve posters everywhere...I mean

almost every bus stop I passed.


What struck me apart from the size of the advertising campaign (which must

be one of the biggest for an ISP?) was that I didn't spot a single "free

web access" or "free ISP" or any other slogan intimating that their service

was free. My first thought was that perhaps they're just appealing to the

legions of small shareholders, ramping up interest for their upcoming IPO.

Then I considered, perhaps the public really have got their collective

heads around this Internet thing, to the point where the de facto standard

is free access through your ISP.


As everyone's jumping on the bandwagon...Granada, FreeBeeb, etc, etc. it

occurred to me that perhaps the free ISP has really reached commodity

stakes and any publisher/e-commerce partner joining the fray should be

considering one along with their server farm and content publishing syetem. 


So, surely any company who is taking customer retention, loyalty, and

direct/database marketing seriously should be creating their own ISP?


...or will the whole business model just disappear to the realms of big

telcos...the early entrants aside? Is there any space left in the free ISP

space for the new kids on the block? Aren't they wasting their time?



Toodle Pip


Sam

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