Article from Bloomberg:
Hague Ltd Signs Content Providers; Will Offer Shares for Free
London, June 30 (Bloomberg) -- Hague Ltd., a privately held U.K. company, said several companies agreed to provide content for its free Internet access service starting next month called themutual.net, in which users will get a 50 percent equity stake.
London-based Hague signed on Lycos Inc., the No. 3 Internet search service, the Guardian Media Group Plc, which owns the U.K.'s Guardian and Observer newspapers, and Scrum.com Ltd., a closely held online rugby news service formerly owned by Emap Plc, the world's largest publisher of consumer magazines.
Hague is offering subscribers free shares in themutual.net, when they sign up online, in the hope that it will replicate the success of Freeserve, which became the U.K.'s largest Internet provider just three months after it was started as a free service by Dixons Group Plc. Providing content helps themutual.net attract and retain users on its Web site.
''Unique content is the best way of keeping someone on a site,'' said Clive Sinclair-Poulton, Hague's chairman, in an interview. The company will sign on more content partners next week, he said. It offers users points when they subscribe, which can be converted to shares if themutual.net is ever sold.
Hague has signed on 60,000 users, or shareholders, in the past three weeks. It is signing on 1,500 users a day and plans on starting themutual.net online service in the middle of July. Still, it is dwarfed by the 1.25 million users that have signed on to Freeserve since it began last September.
While themutual.net has signed on about 10,000 users from Freeserve, many of those may include subscribers to both services. With almost 100 companies offering free Internet access, users are signing on to more than one access provider to get different content and better customer support services.
Dixons, the largest electronics retailer in the U.K., plans to sell shares in Freeserve next month on the London Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. It is valued at about 1.25 billion pounds ($2 billion).
It faces growing competition from Hague Ltd. and other companies such as the X-Stream Network and retailer Tempo Ltd.'s Screaming.net, which offer free local phone calls in the evenings or weekends in addition to not charging subscription fees.
Jun/30/ 99 8:05 |
