Does anybody remember FREE dial up internet ?

subjecttocontract

I remember Free.net and held a small number of their shares around 1999.

recordplayer

I not only remember this, but worked for an ISP at the time which looked at operating a service like this.

At the ISP side of things, the business model was that the ISP had to lease the lines from BT, supplied on ISDN 30 and you had to buy a minimum number of lines. BT would then revenue share for every minute of time recorded on the lines, the user paid for the service via their phone usage charges, as, at that time, BT charges Xp / per minute, and you took a percentage of that. BT won in 2 ways. They received profit from usage charges, and for heavy users, they'd tie up the main line so much that households would order a 2nd line, which BT earned profit on the line rental / provision. 

We investigated this, and in 1998 the implementation was going to cost the ISP a minimum £250,000 over first 12 months, and on top of that we required line termination equipment to handle over 120 lines simultaneously. The whole Freeserve and free.net model put a lot of ISP's out of business, but the 'free' model didn't last long as free local calls were rapidly implemented via cable providers and BT had to move to a similar model, then 2 years later Broadband was released in the UK, again initially via cable providers. This brought the 'free' dial up internet access model to an end.