Best of the ISP-Lists

Competition, Fair and Unfair

If free ISPs win the dialup competition through fair business practices, fee-based ISPs are in trouble, but if they play dirty tricks with user's Internet configurations and computer systems, they will only lose consumer confidence.

[June 13, 2000]

On the ISP-Marketing list in May, EA asked:

"Amongst all the challengers to the traditional ISPs, I would be curious to know whom people feel are their biggest threats and why. Please feel free to name a company or a 'concept' or a trend."

[THS replied] "I think the biggest threat is that darn FREE stuff — offering a service most charge for... for free! I worried, not about a particular company so much as the consumer expecting it to be free nowadays."

[EA noted] "A company like NetZero, even if only half their customers go online (still in the millions), can get monthly access, given average usage by subscribers, at well under $5 per user per month! Of course on top is tech suppport and other costs like marketing. With some smart approaches, those costs can be decreased as well. I must say that I am surprised at their revenues but let's see what they produce soon."

[JTB noted] "If you look closely at NetZero's financials, Qualcomm's $140 million infusion was a godsend."

[BK complained] "Anyone here work for FreeI? These are the types of folks I am angry at. Their installation not only totally hoses DSL and Cable connections, but destroys users' network connections. User data is lost, requiring a rebuild of their system. And FreeI's response is, 'Oh well, have a happy day.'"

[RK added] "We've seen similar results with bluelight.com's software. I have had to send about 150 customers back to their PC companies tech support to walk them through a recovery procedure on their computers after they installed the software and it didn't uninstall cleanly. Then they call us back for another walk through to get back online. In all, I would have to say the thing that kept me the busiest in April and May was getting people straightened out after installing bluelight.com just to try it out. At least NetZero doesn't fool with overwriting system DLLs and peacefully co-exists with a traditional ISP or existing network connections. I wish there was a class action lawsuit against these guys for the time spent. I did have a call from an attorney asking if we had any problems with bluelight, but I don't think that's going anywhere."

[EA asked] "What happened with the proposed class action lawsuit against AOL?"

[RK replied] "The last I heard there are there eight class action lawsuits in progress against AOL."

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