FREE INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS, AND THE WORLD WIDE WEB.

This essay will look at 'Free Internet Service Providers' (ISPs), their formation, their take-up, and their place in a modern Internet society. In retrospect, if we look back a while, (1980s), there existed a system of small interconnected users, using what were called 'Bulletin Boards' although the downloading speed those days was very slow (300 baud, Teletype text only). Later on these boards became interconnected country wide, although sending a message to a Bulletin Board in say London could take several days. From this the Internet concept was born.

With the spread of university Unix server nets (Usenet), American government nets, (Arpanet) and Military networks (Milnmet), a basic Internet was created. Banks (1997) credits 'Tim Berners-Lee' of CERN (Switzerland) with creating the present World Wide Web (www) protocol in 1990, when he wrote a computer language called HTML, the 'look-up protocol' HTTP and the concept of the URL addressing system. Our whole access to each other is based on this principle. Many of the bigger BBS turned commercial and took on paying subscribers. AOL and CompuServe are two examples. This market grew into a multimillion-dollar business with rigid protocols.

Most free ISPs promote themselves as totally 'FREE', offering free internet access, free web space, free e-mail, etc. etc. And it is advertising like this plus the shower of C-Ds attached to computer magazines, given away in shops (Dixon's, W.H.Smith, Boot's Chemists etc) that promotes the word 'Free' over everything else on their disks, and literature. So who are these benefactors? The Times (02/01/00) says 'There are nearly 200 free ISPs' We will only look at one of the U.Ks. premier free ISPs, 'Freeserve'. (www.freeserve.co.uk)

Sunday Times (09/01/00) says that 'Freeserve' is one of the U.Ks. first and biggest free ISP with almost 30% of all U.K. net users'. As a satellite company of 'Dixons Electrical Retailers' it was recently floated on the 'Stock Exchange' and has moved from its base price of 250p to almost 500p. It has yet to make a profit (Lost 3.6M last quarter). However investors still support it because of its future 'potential', should 'Freeserve' ever become a 'Portal' supplier, then profits should flow from its ability (Through its huge customer base) to sell goods and services. This added value will attract more advertising revenue, and the whole thing should 'snowball' it into a profitable company paying dividends. 'Freeserve' has a base value which is claimed to be £5 billion. This mirrors the early life and value attached to nearly all the free ISPs that are not directly supported by a parent company. (Cable & Wireless's free ISP is an example of a supported company, and could probably be run as a 'loss leader' for its advertising value of placing the C & W name before its user database).

If you believe 'That there's no such thing as a free lunch' then you will look and find in the small print that you have to pay telephone charges and other miscellaneous costs such as on-line help etc. Once, having worked out the possible costs to you, you are left wondering 'What's in it for the ISP', or why are they so philanthropic?.

The answer is quite simple, your money, lots of it, willingly given in a second-hand way by means of a share of the telephone charges you run up whilst 'on-line', and the selling of goods and services. The free ISPs who on a promissory of increasing British Telecoms income many times over were able to obtain a percentage of the call charge made to their system. As British Telecom already owned the 'Local-Loops' (Town/City networks) plus the interconnecting 'Spines'. (Probably underused during the evening and weekends) probably saw this partnership as beneficial to their shareholders. Cronin (1996) says, 'That British Telecom has over 1.6 million miles of optical fibre, and is increasing this by 260,000 miles each year' A second competitor, 'Mercury Communications' took some of this traffic as a smaller provider in the earlier days. Ellsworth (1995) points out 'That in the UK nowadays over 150 companies have been granted communication licences, and are or will be in competition with British Telecom'. This meant that the ISPs only had to provide their own internal servers and outward switching 'gateways' to start up, plus of course a method of attracting line-rental customers. Thus the free ISP concept service was launched.

In order for the ISPs to make 'real money' they had to keep you on line for as long as possible. This is achieved in many ways. Firstly by producing a 'Home-Site' that was cluttered up with offers, competitions, free shareware downloads, and rather slow gateways to small search engines. To even look over this 'Home-Site' took some time for the newer users, and thus generated bigger BT bills, and therefore bigger cuts for the ISPs. The 'free' e-mail service has become so enticing to users, who still see it as a form of 'magic'. Many newer users type out their messages on line thus increasing their telephone costs even more. Probably the best enticement to stay on line is the offer of free 'shareware' programmes (often-older versions), or games that take ages to download, and again the users cost rises per minute. Having held you on line for as long as possible with their 'Home-Page', you are subjected to the now familiar 'banner adverts' with their all colour, all singing and dancing flashing GIFs offering you all the things you ever wanted from all over the world. You are invited to 'click' on an icon to be transported to a commercial web-site to see their catalogue and hopefully buy their products. (Probably by now, you forgot you were still on line!). Many of these 'Banner' companies pay an extra dividend to the ISP for every sale made from their site. To access these 'banner' adverts has to be the biggest waste of time and line usage possible, but its all cash to the ISP. The sad thing about these commercial sites if they gain popularity, will be a possible decrease in the local economy, and local employment. (Not yet proven). The Internet share of the market is expected to rise from .3% to 3% (Estimated by NOR Consultants as £9.5 billion.)

Therefore is the free ISP and this entire 'Net' thing a waste of money and time? The answer is a great big 'no'. Using a free ISP diligently can, (if you don't want nor need the handholding offered by the subscription services) be a big boon to your Internet needs. You can really beat the 'system' and cut down on your on-line time by firstly altering your Internet 'set-up' to remove all pictures, GIFs, and Jpeg's etc. Secondly you can (ask someone) almost skip your ISPs 'Home-Page' and go to your favourite search engine within seconds. Lastly if you know what your looking for you can be on the Net, find your subject, save it for later viewing and then log off. Schwartz (1997) wryly looked at the favourite 'Keywords' used on the 'Alta Vistas' search engine and found that (in descending order) the following: Sex, Nude, Pictures, J-PG Pics, Software, Windows, Adult, Women, Naked, and Erotic, and says 'The list is 20% Bill Gates and 80% www.playboy.com (or worse)'.

Most free ISPs ('Net Magazine' has adverts for 22 free ISPs) offer certain basic 'freebies'. Mostly, this consists of 1-5 e-mail addresses allowing you to use differing addresses for business and personal use. Unlimited on-line access to the Internet, with its search engines, games, and a multitude of other pages to cover every interest and hobby, (Even train-spotting has its own pages, www.trainorders.com ). Those wishing to construct their own web-site can have it hosted by the free ISP. All this is offered at a low call fee (using an 0845 number). In fact if you have any basic knowledge (Or a friend that does) the free ISPs have made it very easy to become a Net user. In fact, NOT being on the 'web' is now seen as a social disadvantage, and most kids at school have a 'Net presence'. Sunday Times (02/01/00) quotes the UK as having 13m Internet users, swelling to 20m by 2001. (Still less than a third of population). World-wide estimates, top 200 million users. We will look at the 'have-nots' later on. To the new user, a free ISP seems like a ticket to paradise, and they tend to over use it at first. This of course leads to a high quarterly telephone bill, but most users will soon be aware that the Net offers many excellent and useful services, as well as a load of rubbish. Every Net user will have their favourite reason for accessing the Internet, and this essay will look at some of the major ones.

Probably the major use still lies in 'Electronic-Mail'. Reuters News Agency (16/02/00) (www.reuters.com ) published a report from 'Stamford University' that said '84% of all letter/messages were now sent by e-mail rather than by postal services, and there is no reason to see this decrease in the future'. (A personal view is that 99% of the e-mail received is rubbish, even personal e-mails talk about nothing important). Later the report says that 'E-mail is a way to stay in touch, but you can't share a coffee or a beer with somebody on e-mail or give them a hug, e-mail could be the ultimate isolating technology that further reduces our participation in local communities'. The same survey sampled 4000 adults in 2000 homes and concludes that 'Some Internet time is coming out of time viewing television, but also at the expense of time spent on the phone gabbing with family and friends, or having a conversation with people in the room with them'. This is quite scary stuff if we follow in American footsteps. On a brighter side, business e-mails can be sent and answered the same hour/day, with a possible increase in work turnover and profit. The advantage of personal e-mail lies in its cheapness, providing messages are composed off-line first. The free ISPs have opened the electronic messaging facility to the masses, who, if they had to pay a long term subscription fee, would not have bothered. The Stamford survey estimates that some 300 million e-mails are sent per day (USA).

Every man and his dog seems to be talking of 'Internet Banking' as the new 'rock-n-roll'. Free ISPs have encouraged many new users to log onto these bank sites and explore them for their usefulness (Or not). Certainly the major high street banks are now encouraging its customers to access their accounts via the Internet, (www.barclays.co.uk already has 400,000 net customers, with 10,000 customers a week joining). To be fair, they have introduced a really streamlined service. One can now transfer monies and pay bills electronically at any time. Standing orders can also be set up. However, this so called 'extra' customer service has a down side. That is that the banks can close some unprofitable branches, and by converting to electronic transfer etc. can lay-off (sack) many of its 'back-office' staff. Lloyds-TSB has closed its central London 'Clearing-House' and laid off some 2000 staff. (Daily Telegraph (12/02/00). In spite of increasing profits, the banks seem hell-bent on destroying peoples life-time careers, and we, as customers, do not seem to care, and have embraced the new technology wholesale.

A new type of banking service has arisen because of the Internet. These are collectively called 'The Dot Com Banks'. They have no branches, neither can you have a live face to face conversation. All transaction are carried out on the Internet. Many non-banks have joined the e-bank trend, ie. Prudential Insurance has www.egg.com , floated recently, but had a £150m first year loss. Other 'Dot Com Banks' are financed from aboard ie. www.first-e.com . the trouble with these foreign banks are whether you can exercise any common rights should things go wrong. The advantage of the free ISP here is that you can really afford to spend time researching on-line banking and other financial services before you commit yourself.

Another service close to the heart of the free ISPs is the purchase of goods and services. You can buy anything you desire on the Internet, but not having handled the goods as you would in a shop means you cannot be sure of the overall quality etc.. Some people even buy their cars over the Net, more so from the cheaper European re-sellers. But whenever you buy through an 'advert block', usually placed down the right hand side of the home-page. ('Amazon Books' www.amazon.co.uk is a good example) or through a 'Banner' advert the free ISPs sometimes get a cut of the money spent. This little 'fee' of course helps finance the free ISPs costs etc. (So you should encourage your friends to buy, but don't do it yourself!). Seriously there are items which do sell well, mainly these are international branded goods who's quality is assured. Soon Yong et al (1997) points out that the easiest things to buy are digital products:- Newspapers, magazines, books, journals, and databases. Also computer software (branded), games, audio products (music), and information services such as weather reports, and stock reports. He says that 'These can be purchased by downloading the actual product itself instantly',

Food stores such as 'Iceland', 'Tesco' and 'Sainsbury's' etc now have an on-line ordering and delivery home site to entice you to order all your foodstuffs on the Internet. This market alone is believed to be worth £10 billion p.a. A newer entrant, is the huge holiday industry such as www.bargainholidays.com with 70,000 package holidays, offering a reduced price if you order and pay on line. (Does the future mean less high street outlets). The on line hypochondriac can now log onto www.netdoctor.com for advice etc. It more than likely that whatever you need (even anarchy) there will be a major net presence to cater for them.

What about the 'have-nots'? The Chancellor Gordon Brown has recently said he wants 'To prevent Britain becoming a two tier society divided between the wired-up super-class, and the information deficient underclass'. He is offering cheap loans for home computers and free IT learning centres. What he fails to have noticed is that the poor don't have telephones, and BT charges over a £100 to get one installed, and the quarterly rental plus on-line time will be out of range for the people considered below the official 'poverty line'. (So much for 'joined up thinking'). The 'Ford Motor Company' aiming at its well-paid work force is offering some 350,000 computers at special rates plus free ISP with reduced on-line costs. (A far better thought out scheme).

Anybody tempted to buy shares in the free ISPs should be wary. It is possible that BT and associates may well offer 'unmetered calls' (Monthly fee, and unlimited on-line time). This could knock the bottom out of the free ISPs unless they can offer some form of added value. Another cloud on the horizon is the British governments determination to force the ISPs to 'spy' on us (Probably using the American 'Echelon' system, which looks for a predetermined list of words and 'flags' them up.)

Looking to the future, one can see an increase in Net use, by mobile phones (WAP), direct satellite transfer/downloading, and the use of even simple devices such as 'games machines' and hand held DVAs, to access the WWW. What everybody really wants is high speed at a cheap price, when we get that then the WWW will really fly. Stoll (1995) says of the future, 'We must be aware, however that the Net, as a single users domain, may lead to the biggest known cause of social isolation in the 21^st century. We are essentially 'herd animals' and we may yet have to pay severely in mental isolation, leading to a generalised degradation, a point no one seems to have addressed. It could be as serious as hard drug addiction, and indeed may need the attention of medical expertise to break'.

In conclusion, this thought arises. If through the free ISPs we end up as 'tele-workers', if we also 'tele-shop', and if we socialise via 'chat rooms', who will ever know, or even mourn for us when we die. Our memorial may well be our web-site or e-mail address circulating forever through the networks looking for its human soul. Therefore free ISPs are to be condemned; we are far better off with the subscription services which through cost, restricts our on-line time, forcing us to live in the real world.

REFERENCES.

Banks,M.(1997) Web Psyhos. (Coriolus Press, London.)

Cronin,M. (1996) Global Advantages of the Internet (Van Nostrand, London.)

Ellsworth,E. (1995) Marketing on the Internet. (John Wiley, New York.)

Schwartz,E. (1997) Webonomics. (Penguin Books, London)

Soon-Yong et al.(1997) The Economics of Electronic Commerce. (Macmillan, London)

Stoll,C. (1995) Silicon Snake Oil (Macmillan Press, London.)

Times Newspapers (Various) Supplement-Inter//face (Times Newspapers,London)

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Banks,M. Web Psychos. (Coriolus Press, London. 1997)

Berleur,J. Information Society. (Springer-Varlog, New York. 1990)

Cronin,M. Marketing on the Internet. (Van Nostrand, London. 1995}

Cronin,M. Global Advantages of the Internet (Van Nostrand, London. 1996)

Ellsworth,E. Marketing on the Internet. (John Wiley, New York. 1995)

Gardener,P. Electronic Trading. (Butterworth Press. Southampton 1994)

Martin,W. Global Information Society. (Aslib-Gower, Aldershot. 1995)

Mulgan,G. Communication and Control (Canbridge Press, Cambridge. 1991)

Oliver,R. Shape of things to Come. (McGraw-Hill, New York. 1999)

Schwartz,E. Webonomics. (Penguin Books, London. 1997)

Soon-Yong et al. The Economics of Electronic Commerce. (Macmillan, London. 1997)

Stoll,C. Silicon Snake Oil. (Macmillan Press, London. 1995)

Times Newspapers Supplement-Inter//face (Times Newspapers,London)

Vargo,J. Telecommunications in Business. (Irwin Books, London. 1996)

INTERNET.

Most Internet references are included in the main text.

Essay Word Count (Excluding references/bibliography) 2722.