Thefreeinternet.com

UPDATE 26/7/2002 - When visiting TFI's website today, I've noticed that their service has been offline for over a month. They are in dispute with their telecoms provider (NTL) and it's looking as if it could be going to court. All I can say is, stay well away from this ISP. I signed up for The Free Internet in November 2000, when they were still owned by Excite. At first, I thought that our Internet connection was broken before we had even connected. We got engaged tones often, making it very hard to connect. When you are a member of The Free Internet, constant engaged tones are something that ... more

I have to confess that, apart from an occasional problem we have been quite satisfied with the service provided by The Free Internet so it is with a slight regret that we have been forced to change provider. Hopefully our new provider will be even better – look out for the forthcoming opinion! First let me explain our experience of The Free Internet. I left work at the end of January 2000 and started to use the Internet to contact keep in contact with friends via e-mail. I didn't do much in the way of surfing but I had a bit of a look around. The first telephone bill since my leaving ... more

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Update: TFI are no more. They couldn't even go out of business in style. For over a month they told us our service was unavailable due to a dispute with NTL, and that their lawyers were dealing with it. All prepaid accounts have been taken over by V21, but since they seem equally unreliable, and we were nearly at the end of our prepaid year anyway, we've decided to try our luck with Tiscali instead. I signed up with TheFreeInternet about 15 months ago after seeing their TV advertisment. At the time it cost £50 for a year's "free" access to the internet, which seemed to be the cheapest around ... more

"The Free Internet" (TFI for short) is anything but free. They offer a 7 day, 24 hour internet connection which works out at £8.33 per month (all inclusive). This is still cheaper than many of the more high profile providers I've seen. The catch is you are disconnected after one hour on line. But you simply reconnect again. You're also chopped off after 30 minutes if there's been no activity through your modem. Mega downloads lasting longer than an hour are handled most conveniently using something like Real Download which allows you to pause while disconnected, then resume later where you ... more