i know that long ago dial up was free but the goverment found a way to make us pay more and started to make us pay for the slow speed of dial up and i was wonder is there a way today to get dial up free.
2007-06-27 09:23:02 · 4 answers · asked by lou t 1 in Consumer Electronics ➔ Land Phones
No as a kid i remember dial-up was free and is there any way to get to the internet for free
2007-06-27 09:30:12 · update #1
gee wizz! what country is that!!!
2007-06-27 10:07:54 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
back in the day... you would normally dial up onto a BBS.. which was either run by a university, organization, or on someone's personal computer...
the owner of the BBS would set user access levels, it usually was based on a ratio, you get more access to the BBS with the more that you upload to the BBS...
some of these BBS systems had access to the internet, either from a t1, or ISDN, or some other type of connection... (perhaps even a diffrent line connected with dial up)
depending on someone with admin ability on the BBS you may have gotten internet access for free... but i remember most of these BBS's used to charge like $5 or $10 for internet access, to help cover there expenses... the internet was not a business at this point, and people set up BBS'es and shared there internet access for the love of the technology...
the internet began to become popular, when the most popular BBS style system (AOL) came on the scene... like most BBSes, most of the content was on there computers, but you did have a portal out to the internet..
net zero came out years afterward... and provided "free" dial up internet access... other companies followed net zero's lead, and set up "free" dial up access.... this free internet access was funded by advertisements that you had to view every time you connected to there network... some "hackerish" people developed ways to bypass the ads, and the "free" providers were constantly having to recode there software so that everyone would see the ads... this must have cut into the revenue that these "free" services were providing, because within 2 years or so, all of the "free" dial up services either disappeared, or in the case of netzero, reinvented them self, and began charging a small fee to use there service...
now the only "free" internet that you can get is "stealing" an open wifi signal which is a gray area, it may be considered illegal and theft of services...
2007-06-27 20:17:56 · answer #2 · answered by joe r 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
You're not that old to remember free dial up internet. The only reason it existed was that you had to withstand loads of popup ads and ad borders on your screen. And that was in the days of 9600-14.4k service.
There's no gubbmint conspiracy to kill free ISPs. The business model just simply didn't work. The advertisers on those free ISPs never got the return on investment. The free users decided that they'd rather pay $5/mo for their ISP to stop streaming the crap that slowed down their Pentium 100 MHz machines.
There's an old reliable site called TheList that might help your search.
2007-06-27 17:08:23 · answer #3 · answered by CMass Stan 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
What do you mean dial up was free? Dial up what?
Dial up ISP always had a fee.
Phone companies also always had a fee.
It costs to run things.
please clarify
2007-06-27 16:27:32 · answer #4 · answered by GTB 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋