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To: Dale Baker who wrote (6351)	5/20/1999 6:14:00 AM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 118717

Interesting coincidence - BBC just had a 15-minute program on free ISP's in Britain, like XSNI. Except XSNI wasn't mentioned. Here is a recap of what they found (lest anyone accuse me of "stealing" DD again, LOL). Dixon's Freeserve is the largest ISP in Britain with a million users paying nothing. AOL is number two; they charge, but AOL users spend 75% of their time on AOL sites, not the Web. AOL doesn't see themselves competing head-on with the free ISP's because AOL provides value-added content. Other big companies offering free service are Tesco (groceries), British Telecoms, Virgin Net, Barclays Bank, WH Smith (bookseller)and the Daily Mirror. These are all huge, well-funded companies with very deep pockets. The program mentioned two companies which offer totally free calls. The only one named was Tempo, which owns its own phone company that users must switch to from BT. Presumably the other one is XSNI but they did not say. I came away from this thinking that a company without a strong established retail base will have a very hard time competing in the British free ISP business. Big retailers can make this a loss leader business to draw in users who will then buy stuff from those companies online. XSNI doesn't sell anything as far as I know.