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Deathmatch: Free ISPs

The "free everything" model of Internet business might be a thing of the past, but free Internet service seems to be surviving. Barely. As the recent demise of free ISPs from AltaVista and other dot-coms proves, all freebies are not created equal. We gathered the best of the remaining contenders and let our testers have their way with them to find out which service was worth not paying for.

  Name NetZero Winner! Bluelight.com Juno Selling Points With dial-up numbers across the United States and Canada, NetZero offers integrated e-mail and voice mail, 40 hours of free Web browsing a month, and multilingual site design. A 98 percent connection rate and nice interface earned it an easy victory. Kmart's BlueLight.com offers an array of dial-up numbers to choose from, plus multilingual e-mail and chatthough the service takes a backseat to BlueLight's not-so-hidden agenda of selling Kmart merchandise. Only 25 hours per month are free. Aimed at business users, Juno offers free Internet, e-mail, and instant messaging services, along with a variety of ASP-type applications, like an online organizer and an online, menu- driven Web site builder. It even offers a book club. Usability While our testers didn't rave about any of the services, NetZero's intuitive setup process beat out the others by a landslide. Connect speeds ranged from 48Kbps to 53Kbps. Once online, users had access to a comprehensive array of Internet help and how-to pages. Setup on BlueLight was mostly painless for our testers, and connect speeds held to a respectable range of 48Kbps to 52Kbps. Ironically, BlueLight's e-mail partnership with Yahoo gave some users trouble when they indicated during signup that they already held Yahoo Mail accounts. Our testers found Juno's service sloppy and unintuitive. Some weren't sure if they were signing up for free access or one of Juno's cost-added services. Once online, connect speeds ranged from a mere 31Kbps to a tolerable 49Kbps, with frequent disconnects. Survivability With its stock lingering around a dollar and net losses of about 24 cents per share, NetZero appears only marginally less doomed than its major competitors. The death of Spinway, BlueLight's ISP partner, makes for a hazy forecast. Kmart promises to keep it kicking, amid rumors that BlueLight may become a pay service. With more than $50 million in annual losses and stock dwindling to around $1 a share, prospects for Juno don't look good. Bottom Line Simple setup and fast, reliable connections. It's easy enough to use, and the price is right. Slow, buggy, and confusing make a sad combination. RATINGS Excellent Good Fair Poor Unacceptable