When the Internet really took hold of the UK market in the second half of the 1990's, the thing that probably drove the massive increase in popularity was the product offering promised by Freeserve, who were the first internet service provider "to offer a mass market, subscription-free Internet ... Read review
Advantages: Innovative Disadvantages: Patchy service
...to boast "Within five months Freeserve had opened one million customer accounts and became the clear market leader, revolutionising the home Internet access market in the UK. On 2 August 1999, after only ten months of operation, Freeserve was listed on the London Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, with Dixons continuing to own approximately 80% of Freeserve. The IPO allocated to institutional and retail investors 153,043,478 shares, of which 90,000,000 ... ...shares to cover over-allotments. The Freeserve Offering was over 30 times subscribed, with more than 50,000 applicants for shares in the UK retail offering. At the Offer price of 150 pence per share Freeserve was valued at £1.51 billion."
Clearly the numbers game is a critical one for them and they like boasting of how successful they have been as an organisation, but for months there was suspicion about whether the Freeserve ... more
When the Internet really took hold of the UK market in the second half of the 1990's, the thing that probably drove the massive increase in popularity was the product offering promised by Freeserve, who were the first internet service provider "to offer a mass market, subscription-free Internet access service for the cost of a local phone call". The quote comes from Freeserve's own website - http://www.freeserve.com/ - which goes on to boast "Within five months Freeserve had opened one million customer accounts and became the clear market leader, revolutionising the home Internet access market in the UK. On 2 August 1999, after only ten months of operation, Freeserve was listed on the London Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, with Dixons continuing to own approximately 80% of Freeserve. The IPO allocated to institutional and retail investors 153,043,478 shares, of which 90,000,000 were new shares issued by Freeserve, raising the sum of £135 million, and 63,043,478 were shares sold by Dixons. In addition, Dixons granted to Credit Suisse First Boston an option over a further 22,956,522 shares to cover over-allotments. The Freeserve Offering was over 30 times subscribed, with more than 50,000 applicants for shares in the UK retail offering. At the Offer price of 150 pence per share Freeserve was valued at £1.51 billion."
Clearly the numbers game is a critical one for them and they like boasting of how successful they have been as an organisation, but for months there was suspicion about whether the Freeserve business model could ever really succeed, especially as many of their competitors started to go to the wall.
AltaVista's revolutionary promise of flat rate, always on Internet access sparked a new phase in the game, even though they never actually delivered anything. Freeserve struggled for some time to maintain a decent service and had to close down to new members for a while as they started trying to get their act together. They've gone back into the mass market again now and are pushing the flat rate services - their website lists their various packages as follows -
Freeserve AnyTime gives you free Internet calls, day and night for just £12.99 per month with no call charges -
Freeserve HomeTime allows you to use the Internet at home without worrying about being charged for calls. For a flat rate of £8.99 per month, all Internet calls from evenings between 6pm-8am Mon-Fri and all weekend calls 6pm Friday to 8am Monday are absolutely free.
When you register with Freeserve you can simply pay for your Internet calls as you use them. Calls are charged at local call rates and there are no monthly subscriptions.
FreeservePlus keeps you computer connected to the Internet 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for a flat fee of £44.99 per month.
The rest of the package consists of unlimited e-mail addresses, 15 Mb of free webspace, 'free' online customer support (which costs you 50p a minute!) "and a fortnightly email newsletter with exclusive offers" (OOOOH!!! How exciting!)
These days that assortment of packages is pretty standard, although my preference is AOL's flat rate service at £14.99 per month for access whenever I want. You can't really argue with the Freeserve range, however.
Freeserve was originally an inspired development by the Dixons electronics retail group and was sprung on an unsuspecting world towards the end of 1998. A couple of years later, Wanadoo, the French media organisation bought up Freeserve, seeing it as the UK arm of their Europe wide empire.
Now of course comes the acid question - is Freeserve actually any good?
Well, I signed up with Freeserve about 18 months ago, like many others in the UK, and in fact launched my first website - www.tom1385.fsnet.co.uk - on their free webspace. However, because I wasn't a regular user and didn't stay active my membership lapsed and they pulled my website without telling me, the naughty chaps.
My experience was that Freeserve was actually pretty good, with some decent content on their portal, although I got very concerned when they started blocking new memberships and the Freeserve extension is pretty damn unhip. It's got its place, but it's not my fave, although Freeserve has undoubtedly attracted enormous interest and membership in the last three years, and almost singlehandedly revolutionised the ISP market.
The authoritative PC Pro magazine carried out its annual review of ISP's a few months ago and were pretty scathing about the Freeserve offering. Among other things, Davey Winder says "Perhaps it should come as no surprise to find the embattled BT sitting none too prettily at the bottom of the ten player pile ... not performing much better was Freeserve, also maintaining a not so fine tradition of hovering around the bottom of our ISP league. In fact, the overall scores for BT and Freeserve were within a hair's breadth of each other. Freeserve did slightly better than BT, ending up ninth for connection, eighth for services and ninth for support, but not sufficiently - we hope - to save it from being equally shamefaced over its showing ... Freeserve has a healthy market share, but not all of its users are happy with the service."
Now the bits I've seen from regular users of the service tend to support that view, although Freeserve certainly seems to have got its act together after a fairly ropey time with its service when it first started. I can't recommend Freeserve, but it might be right for you...
Advantages: Ummm, errr, pass on that one! Disadvantages: Poor service
...NTL.
Well, back then Freeserve had no monthly subscription fee but I had to pay local call charges and being newly addicted my phone bills were horrendous. The service cut off regularly – whether it was supposed to or not, I don’t know – and it was quite often engaged on my first connect attempts. Luckily I’m free of all that now.
Their website at the time was fairly simple and self-explanatory –sometimes I log into ... ...I used to use Freeserve chat in my newbie days but often found it slow or difficult to load, got thrown off regularly for no obvious reason and the functions were not very advanced – this still seemed to be the case the last time I looked (a few months ago).
Although I no longer use Freeserve as my main ISP I am forced to log in to their dial-up (and pay the call charge) once a month for at least a few seconds to enable my old Freeserve email ...
blurbubble 31.05.2001
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Freeserve
Advantages: 15mb free webspace, 3 sign-up options, unlimited email addresses, newsgroup access Disadvantages: the service disconnects you after 2 hours of being online
I’ve been using Freeserve as my ISP since soon after it was launched. It is very easy to get hold of and install - grab a CD from your local Dixons/Currys/PC World, and it comes with all the software you need, such as the latest version of Internet Explorer. Or alternatively, if you already have an internet connection, you can sign up at their website - http://www.freeserve.com. Incidentally, I still use the site as my homepage; it’s ... ...The basic membership that Freeserve offers is the No-Ties package; there’s no monthly fee but you have to pay for the calls you make on the 0845 number, but that’s just local rate anyway. I used to use this at my parents’ house and it’s okay if you’re not on the net all that much, but if you sit online then I’d advise you to try one of their other packages.
I live in London during uni term time though, and there ...
carys 04.08.2001
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Freeserve
Advantages: Good Packages & Extras Disadvantages: Prices
...originally I was not with Freeserve but I have now come back to Freeserve as they provide one hell of a lot better service! Let us begin!
Packages:
Freeserve has 3 pay plans that gives you time on the Internet. They are: . Freeserve Anytime. Freeserve Anytime is £13.99 a month. Over the last few months this price has gone up by £1 but this is because they have recently installed more servers.. to cope! For your £13.99 You get unlimited time on ... ...in the day.
. Freeserve Hometime. Freeserve Hometime is £10.99 a month. With this package you get unlimited surfing time at evenings and on weekends. You get the normal benefits of a Freeserve membership and although you get unlimited surfing time at evenings and on weekends you can still access the Internet during the day. The only catch with Freeserve Hometime is that you have to be a BT Customer. And the billing will be on your phone bill. This ...
Roberts 20.04.2001 (21.04.2002)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Freeserve
Freeserve is very higly rated in some ways it deserves credit in other ways it doesn't.
The website is great and has everythin you need from the web on one page.
The new unmetered service is unfair because it only provides for BT customers. The service isn't all that fast. It has the usual stuff from an isp- free webspace, email chat etc.
The website is too slow at peak times so beware!!
The help section needs to be more helpful and add new features ...
arifaslam 05.08.2000
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Freeserve
Advantages: Free Disadvantages: can run up quite a phone bill
Freeserve is a nice simple free isp, you simply pay for your phone calls and thats it. It was te first free isp that got heavily publisized when it came out in 99. Though the advertising bar in outlook express, and start up page in internet explorer can seem quite anoying, it is very simple to choose not to view them. On the whole, freeserve is good if you are not planning on using the internet much and using email, but if you like to surf for long ... ...no phone bill isp (freeserve offers its own free after 6 and at weekends for £5.99 a month, bt also offer the same deal for £9.99 a month, also with breathe.com you can make a one off payment of £50 and get 24/7 internet acsess totolly free, or you can inquire into spending £20 to get a box that ataches to your phone line to get totolly free 24/7 internet acsess but you have to use there phone company ...
wior85 20.07.2000
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Freeserve
