Excite@Home is launching a free ISP:
news.cnet.com
Excite@Home to launch free ISP tomorrow
By John Borland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
January 5, 2000, 6:15 p.m. PT
Excite@Home will launch its free Internet access service tomorrow, according to people familiar with the company's plans.
As previously reported, the portal has been looking for a way to catch up to similar services being offered by rivals AltaVista and Yahoo.
But the new service could play a more important role for the Redwood City, California, company than similar free Net access initiatives launched by numerous other companies. Excite@Home executives are betting they can persuade many of their new dial-up users to eventually sign up for the company's high-speed cable Net service, a goal that none of the other portals have.
Free Internet service providers have jumped quickly into the mainstream in the last several months. Once viewed as a relative novelty, gratis services are now provided by well-regarded companies like Yahoo and Kmart, and millions of people have signed up.
Free high-speed Net services are even beginning to pop up, although these remain a chancy business model.
Dubbed FreeWorld, Excite@Home's free access will be provided by the CMGI-owned 1stUp.com, the same company that launched AltaVista's free dial-up service last August. Like other free services, it will be supported by advertising, with a window displaying banner ads that can't be closed as long as the user is online.
In order to receive the free service, users will have to provide some demographic information and allow their movements online to be tracked. Ads targeted to subscribers' interests will be displayed in the FreeWorld window.
The service will launch tomorrow, with access numbers available nationwide, sources said.
Alone among the major Web portals, Excite@Home is already as much an access company as a Net content player. Its cable modem service, which boasts more than 1 million subscribers, is the largest high-speed Net operation in the country.
But it has lacked a dial-up component, a critical gap in a world where the vast majority of Excite customers still use regular phone lines to access the site. Analysts have said that offering a dial-up service would help the company move mainstream Web surfers to its high-speed offering.
Nevertheless, the offer will initially not include any discounts for free ISP customers who decide to upgrade to the @Home cable service, sources said.
The deal is also good news for 1stUp.com, which now proves that it can take its services beyond the CMGI stable of companies, even though CMGI's AltaVista is a direct competitor to Excite@Home. |
