Topic: Freeserve

It's been rumoured for a while, and finally the adverts are appearing - Freeserve is being rebranded into it's parent company Wanadoo.

Adverts are appearing in the three expected places, Online, TV and newspapers, and will be staged in 3 phases - "Hippy", "Haircut" and "Shaving" (no - we're not joking!).

Coincidently, as this article is being written an advert on satellite TV channel, Sky News, has just screened. Freeserve's adverts have never been, what one could call "traditional" - and this new campaign from ITTraffic.com certainly follows the trend.

ISP Freeserve are considering the introduction of bandwidth capping, enabling them to break the new price barrier of £20.

Since BTYahoo's introduction of a capped service for under £20, ISPs have been falling over themselves to match the incumbants move.

No details are available yet, according to The Reg, however announcements from the ISP could come within a couple of weeks (mid April).

Freeserve, owned by French company Wanadoo, recently won the ISPAs for Best National Consumer ISP. Its also rumoured that the ISP could soon be dropping its Freeserve label, in favour of adopting its parents livery, which could be a nice time to introduce any new "barrier breaking" offerings for consumers.

Just a short note to remind readers, that starting today, Freeserve are offering their 512k broadband deal in a special 3 month discounted price - perfect for the potential Freeserve subscriber. The deal results in a saving of nearly £85 !

In a deal resulting in a saving over near £85, Freeserve will be knocking off £12 per month off their normal 512k subscription of £27.99 for 3 months (price reverts to the normal £27.99 thereafter). In addition, the offer includes a free ADSL modem, and free setup/connection.

The deal does come with one caveat however, in that the service comes with a minimum of 12-month subscription at a time, when many ISPs are offering 3 month or 30 day rolling contracts.

Non-the-less, for the Freeserve wannabe, the £85 saving cannot be ignored! Read more about the offer at the Freeserve broadband website.

Freeserve have today released details of a deal with media delivery specialist Malvern which which could be a sign of an awaited 1Meg service from the ISP.

Freeserve will soon be piloting enhanced delivery of content via both "desktop delivery" and the more traditional streaming nature. The launch of the service will initially be a pilot, limited to a few of the huge advertising partnerships that Freeserve owner Wanadoo have built up.

One issue could be however,the available bandwidth of the broadband customers of Freeserve. With Freeserve, the only currently available package has been the traditional 512kbps one. With the increased bandwidth required to really benefit from the likes of the Malvern deal, customers would be more suited on a 1mb package. Historically, Freeserve have never been far behind BT in releasing an equivilent package, so following our exclusive announcement earlier this month of BT's tripple 1mb product releases. Could Freeserve be about to join the 1mb gang ?

Desktop delivery is something to watch over the possible evolution of broadband technologies from a connection that is predominantly used using "pull" technologies (ie user requests a file and the file is delivered). Instead we could be entering a transitional time where "push" technologies areused for ISPs that concentrate heavily on portal content.

With the likes of BT Yahoo & NTL concentrating heavily on content and providing customised 'dialers' for setting up the connection, the ability to automatically push specific content to subscribers is one that is going to both please and anger customers alike. A few years ago, Personal Video Recorder company TiVo, did a similar tactic with the introduction of the facility for advertisers (in this case the BBC) to pay for TiVo to send a signal for all PVRs to automatically record a program. This caused a few people to complain loudly on a TiVo community website, and the functionality, whilst alledgedly still within TiVo's software has remained dormant ever since.

Malvern have made a name for themselves by providing superior content delivery software to well known brands. Examples of Malverns delivery systems can be seen at the following web sites :

• Atom Films
• Virgin Records
• 20th Century Fox
• National Geographic Channel

The Inquirer have reported that AOL are rejecting all email from Freeserve customers.

The news comes on the back of another ISP, BTOpenworld also alledgedly blocking email originating from Freeserve.

Net4Nowt today reports that a Freeserve Broadband customer faces a migration charge to leave their current ISP - Freeserve, in favour of Nildram. Under the migration scheme, broadband subscribers should be able to migrate simply and easily to another [compatable] ISP, despite having completed Freeserves minimum 12 month contract.

Freeserve are quoted as saying, "sorry we do not support migration so you wont get your CBUK number."

To further add insult to injury, Freeserve then quoted that a move to Nildram from Freeserve would cost £10 termination of contract fee, plus a reconection fee to BTWholesale for connection to Nildram.

Maybe Freeserve would do well to review their 'Term and Termination' section, which fails to mention such a fee being levied to customers.

Freeserve are now offering a simple try ADSL for one month trial, and if you are not happy at the end of it, you will simply return all the hardware and get that months £27.99 fee refunded. Setup & hardware is free. According to Freeserve this saves £49.99.

This offer allows the user to test broadband out or 30 days at no cost.

The only stipulation is that it's not available to users who have been a Freeserve broadband customer in the last 6 months.

Internet service provider Freeserve has said it will end its distribution partnership with electronics retailer Dixons when it comes up for renewal in February 2004.

Dixons was rumoured to be abandoning Freeserve in favour of AOL, following a report in the Sunday Telegraph on the 3 August. The paper claimed that AOL has offered Dixons £10 million for in-store promotions and joint advertising campaigns.