David Rutherford mentioned the "free" Internet providers here in the UK.
What he didn't explain is how they actually make their money. They take
advantage of a ruling by the telephone watchdog authority over here ,
OFTEL  which, I believe capped the rate that BT could charge for the
calls through sub-let lines to ISPs. Someone came up with a bright
scheme to offer free internet access using these lines so that BT could
only take 30%(?) of the call charge while the ISP got the rest. As it is
low-rate local call charges (about $1.00 per hour off-peak), the user
doesn't notice any difference on their phonebill but the more people who
sign up, the more money the ISP makes. Obviously there are other factors
involved, namely the high investment required by the ISP on bandwidth,
modems and other hardware to cope with a large demand. Personally, I
find that the service of one that I have been using (bigwig.net) has
been excellent and I haven't noticed any bandwidth problems. No
advertisements either! The latest one, www.freecall.co.uk, on the other
hand, looks like a bad scam. They appear to harvest your e-mail address
and then bombard you with ads. Oh well, I am enjoying a free lunch for
the moment and hope the bill doesn't arrive too soon!

Cheers,

John Dunlop

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