Does anybody remember FREE dial up internet ?

Neil_Jones

MouldyOldDough said:

JaneDoeJohnDoe said:

Yes, Freeserve, Wannadoo, BT, AOL & the like!

No - genuinely "free" as in free calls and zero subscription costs

Doubt that's ever been a thing.  No such thing as a free lunch.  The advertising required would have been extensive, especially after the dot com crash.

There were providers that gave you free calls during a certain period, for example ic24 (an ISP that was owned by the parent company of the Daily Mirror at the time) used to offer free calls after 8pm and at weekends, but otherwise it was pretty much standard 0845 numbers the rest of the time.

J_B

Neil_Jones said:

MouldyOldDough said

No - genuinely "free" as in free calls and zero subscription costs

Doubt that's ever been a thing.  No such thing as a free lunch.  ................

NTL did such a thing IIRC

1882

Neil_Jones said:

MouldyOldDough said:

JaneDoeJohnDoe said:

Yes, Freeserve, Wannadoo, BT, AOL & the like!

No - genuinely "free" as in free calls and zero subscription costs

Doubt that's ever been a thing.  No such thing as a free lunch.  The advertising required would have been extensive, especially after the dot com crash.

There were providers that gave you free calls during a certain period, for example ic24 (an ISP that was owned by the parent company of the Daily Mirror at the time) used to offer free calls after 8pm and at weekends, but otherwise it was pretty much standard 0845 numbers the rest of the time.

Yes I used ic24, although I only remember getting free access on Saturdays (maybe Sundays too). They offered 1 hour up to 5pm on Saturdays and I used to rush home from my football match to get on before 5pm to update my website. They let you stay on for the hour even though most of that time was after 5pm. I found it almost impossible to access the service much before 5pm.

At one time I used another company offering free access at any time but I forget their name. To use their service they gave me a small box which plugged into the BT socket and you plugged the phone and internet lead into that. The deal was that your voice calls were routed over their service and they charged a reduced or the same rate as BT (I forget as this was around 24 or 25 years ago).  But your internet access calls were free 24 hours a day I think. It worked well for around 6 months and then stopped, I never did receive a bill for my voice calls so their business model failed in regards to me at least.

ohreallƳ

IC24 was free every evening at 20:00, it was a race to get on every night.

gefnew

Sad news here.
AOL ends dial-up internet service after more than 30 years - BBC News

bob2302

gefnew said:

Sad news here.
AOL ends dial-up internet service after more than 30 years - BBC News

Why is it sad? It was rubbish. In any case, it's just North America, AOL already shut it down in the UK.

I'm more concerned about the end of support for copper twisted-pairs.  FTTC is faster than I need, and allows me to place my router on a convenient extension. 

SavySaver2020

Made money on the phone usage.

SavySaver2020

Dixon's then Curry's changed over to AOL

Aletank

I used IC24 & went on one called BigBlueSky, £20 for life ! It was terrible to get on at peak times etc Here's a post from 2004 asking about it https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/110964/bigbluesky-internet-anyone-remember

TadleyBaggie

Used the regular dial up for.a couple of years, then my company I needed a decent connection so I could review bug reports out of hours, so they stumped up for 128Kb ISDN, luxury!