Can You Do Without the Whistles and Bells? (free24-7.net)

Member Name: happybunny75

Product:	free24-7.net
Date:	29/04/02 (299 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap and unadulterated internet access

Disadvantages: Contention ratio is poor, Expensice technical support, Potentially a dead-duck

Let’s face it, Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) are about as interesting as choosing a pension or watching the washing machine whilst in spin cycle (it’s quite fascinating when it’s doing a slow wash!).

We are here because of them and the internet wouldn’t exist without them.

Choosing an ISP isn’t exactly a life-changing experience, nor is it detrimental if you first choose the wrong one and decide to experiment with various others.

And that is exactly my philosophy with ISP’s. As offers and prices are changing constantly, it doesn’t hurt to shop around and try different ones, providing they don’t tie you down to a minimum term contract that’s more than 1 month.

After a fairly long stint at AOL, I decided I needed a change. For starters, my initial decision to subscribe to the AOL un-metered service was determined by the fact that I was governed by an NTL cable line at my last abode – and as some of you might know, non-BT lines can be highly restricting when choosing an ISP. My decision to change was mainly due to the amount of space that the AOL software took up on my rather old, ‘hard disk-challenged’ PC and that most of the AOL features, including the browser, I never used anyhow.

My criteria were simple: un-metered access ( a monthly charge without phone call charges) ; a simple dial-up connection to use with my Internet Explorer browser and no additional software to be installed; and most importantly CHEAP.

My hunt for this illusive ISP ended after searching in 08whatever.com, a site that will search for ISP’s that meet your requirements after the completion of a few questions on your internet usage and experience of accessing the internet.

My relationship with Free24-7.net was born.

Free24-7.net, as they say in the About Us blurb on their site, is a subsidiary company of V21.net, another provider.
r>Free24-7 offer a ‘no frills’ alternative to common ISP’s, who offer tonnes of web space, email addresses, safe surfing for kids and portal pages for shopping, chat etc.

On initial inspection of the homepage, Free24-7 did seem to meet all of my criteria for my next ISP. For a monthly charge of £7.99 I would have unlimited access without the usual paraphernalia of other ISP’s: no email addresses, web space, child safety features or even a default homepage. All I got on registration was my account number, confirmation of my user name and password, dial-up number and POP server (incoming server) and SMTP (outgoing server) addresses in order to reinitialise Outlook Explorer. Eureka! An ISP without the hassle.

Registration itself was quick and easy, and by using a debit or credit card I was able to start surfing using Free24-7 within 10 minutes of registration.

For the first couple of weeks everything was running smoothly. The cut off time was 3 hours and inactivity cut off was 10 minutes – enough time to leave my PC to grab a coffee and visit the ‘conveniences’. I was however beginning to become a little concerned by the increasing difficulty of dialling up on some evenings where it would maybe take a dozen attempts to get connected to the server. I still wasn’t hindered however, as once I was on I stayed on and didn’t experience any painful and untimely ‘booting off’ until my 3 hours.

The crux had to come though, and it was evident that Free24-7 was unable to provide an un-metered service at such a competitive price. One month after my initial registration, I received an email informing me of the ‘exciting new changes’ to the Free24-7 packages. From the beginning of April, the packages for internet usage were being changed to several packages to suit different users.

In the changes the £7.99 package remained, but was no longer ‘unlimited
217; access but would now only allow up to 28 hours of un-metered access a week.

The further packages would be £9.99 for up to 42 hours for the V21 Lite; £14.99 for up to 56 hours for V21 standard; £24.99 for up to 77 hours for Nethead and various other business packages.

The first thing I noticed was the integration between Free24-7 and V21 – ok, it made sense as Free24-7 was no longer a cheap alternative to the V21 holding.

Secondly, the packages for £9.99 and upwards now included the obligatory email addresses and web space, something which I wasn’t terribly fussed about to begin with.

Despite my despondency and my utterances of “All good things must come to an end” I did decide to persevere with Free24-7 (or is it V21?) with their Lite package for £9.99 a month.

Now each package offers a contention ratio (a ratio showing the amount of people vying for network access at any one time). And as one would expect the more you pay the lower the contention ratio is. And surprisingly enough the £7.99 package’s ratio is 20:1 (only 1 in 20 subscribed users can access the internet at a time). Not so bad for the Lite package at 15:1, Standard 10:1 and Nethead at 8:1 (I’m beginning to sound like a betting forecaster now!).

This might all sound like double-Dutch but the contention ratio is an important factor in dialling up a connection to the internet – it’s the difference between getting on and happily surfing or trying for over half an hour (or more) just to send an email.

The proof is in the pudding, as they say and since my recent change to the Lite package I have had mixed fortunes. Initially, I had a few bad days (mainly Sunday evenings) when I could try dialling for an hour and wouldn’t get on. But through perseverance (and let’s face it, we all need it for using any ISP) the service seems to have improved and I am no longer plagued by to many atte
mpts to get on here to read opinions!

At the moment my impressions of my ISP, are still rather mixed.

On a positive side, there still isn’t the unnecessary amount of facilities, which I hate in comparison to other ISP’s. Logging on to my account is easy, and details such as personal and payment details can be amended fairly easily. There are also a couple of interesting sections with the account facility. One of which is the ‘Server Status’ link that allows users to view the projected and actual contention ratios for the previous week – most of the projected ratios are higher than the actual ratios, (which is good). I can also access my ‘Connection Log’ which lists the time and duration I have used the ISP, with a running total and an indication of the number of hours I have left for the week.

However, technical support for Free24-7 is charged at a hefty £1 a minute. Now, one would think that this isn’t the ideal ISP for newbies to the internet, but luckily Free24-7 offer Gold Membership, whereby if you expect to make a number of technical calls in one month you can pay an extra £2 a month on any package for unlimited technical support at local call rates.

There is also the problem for those who by chance, stumble across Free24-7’s homepage, which still seems to be advertising the £7.99 service for unlimited access, which must have misled a number of recent subscribers.

What has concerned me most is that I’ve received emails from Free24-7 for two consecutive weeks informing me that I have used 80% of my allotted hours for that week and that whilst not being threatening it seems to suggest that they don’t really want people to be using all of their hours for their particular package. A snippet reads “If you do happen to reach your account type's total use allowance, we will notify you once again and ask that you upgrade to an account more suited to
your expected usage level.”. The fact that I would not be allowed to access the service after I reach my maximum hours, seems to suggest that a certain amount of bullying might be employed to move me on to a higher tariff if I continue to use 80% of my allowance per week. I’ll keep you posted on this one.

I can’t recommend Free24-7 as an ISP for all. In fact it probably isn’t an ISP for most people. Connecting to it sometimes takes time and you haven’t got the other add-ons that you would expect with other ISP’s. But it is an experiment on my part just to see how cheap an ISP can get whilst still proving a reliable connection without constant booting up the proverbial backside when the servers get too frantic.

We’ll see….



Useful site for researching ISP’s: 08whatever.com.

Minimum package charge for Free24-7.net: £7.99 for 28 hours per week.