Freewwweb LLC Thursday filed a
motion with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York
seeking a Title 11 order authorizing debtors to line up and issue their terms.
At the front of the list is Juno Online
Services Inc. The national ISP that on Thursday announced it would
start transferring WorldSpy’s 260,000 free subscribers to its membership,
is poised to pick up the same deal for Freewwweb users.
According to court records, Juno seeks to gain approval
for the sale of Freewwweb’s domain names and establish terms for the
referral of the defunct free ISP’s subscribers.
Although Freewwweb maintains it has millions of subscribers, the actual
number of users Juno would pickup in the deal remains unreported.
Freewwweb is a wholly owned subsidiary of Smart World Technologies LLC. In
the summer of 1996, it became one of the first national providers to
unleash an advertiser supported free Internet access scheme. Smart World
Communications then spun off Smart World Technologies LLC, which owns
Freewwweb.
The free ISP phenomenon is a European export, where Internet access remains
a predominantly metered service.
According to International Data
Corp., the free ISP business model remains critical to European
access, but is not without its flaws in the U.S. Internet economy.
James Eibisch, IDC European ISP Markets research manager, said the free ISP
model initially flourished in the U.K. due to a combination of higher local
call charges and advantageous revenue sharing deals that allowed the
regions ISPs to build their business around call revenues, rather than
service subscriptions.
Eibisch added that while free access in the U.K. is now the standard
business model, U.S. free ISPs required diversified revenue streams to
survive.
“The free ISP model is, however, not without flaws,” Eibisch said. “As
dialup prices decrease, ISPs will be forced to look elsewhere for revenue,
the obvious alternative source being advertising. The provision of
value-added services, such as online banking, shopping, or trading, will
also compensate for the loss of call revenues.”
IDG research determined that despite the strong growth of free services and
the rapid conversion of major ISPs to free access models, it is unlikely
that all services would be offered for free.
Eibisch said that the lack of a formal contract between the user and ISP
and the absence of payment means that customer churn is inevitably higher
for free service providers.
“Users of free ISPs have little reason to remain with an under-performing
provider other than reliance on that provider’s value-added services or
unwillingness to change e-mail address and, or URL,” Eibisch said.
“Additionally, again due to the lack of ongoing subscription charge,
accounts can be underused,” Eibisch continued. “Faced with high churn rates
and lack of service use, free ISPs must confront the problem of driving up
site traffic via advertising, commerce, and pay-for value-added services.”
