Freeserve
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| Public company | |
| Industry | Internet and Communications |
| Fate | Acquired |
| Successor | defunct = 2000 |
| Founded | 1998 |
| Headquarters | Hemel Hempstead, England, UK |
| Products | Internet service |
Freeserve was a British Internet service provider, founded in 1998. It was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index but merged into the Wanadoo group in 2000, itself a subsidiary of France Telecom. Wanadoo's successor was Orange Home UK whose successor to this day is the telecommunications company EE.
The company was founded in 1998 as project between Dixons Group plc and Leeds-based hosting provider Planet Online to provide free Internet access to customers buying new home PCs from Dixons stores. Initially the concept was called Channel 6 and was between Packard Bell and Planet Online. Packard Bell pulled out and Dixons (who resold their PCs) stepped in as joint partner.
Freeserve was one of the first of the UK's ISPs to dispense with the usual monthly subscription fee for Internet access, and instead to collect a proportion of the standard telephone line charges. (At the time virtually all Internet access in the UK was by dial-up access via BT lines.) With Freeserve however each customer had 10 megabytes of webspace, and could split the email address into as many names as desired, using a simple extension of the normal email naming protocols (user@freeserve.co.uk could subdivide into email for dad@user.freeserve.co.uk and mum@user.freeserve.co.uk etc.).
At the time, not having a standing charge for such a comprehensive service, especially the webspace, was a radical step. Further revenue was obtained from advertisements on Freeserve's homepage, which was set as the default page in the customers' web browsers upon installing the Freeserve connection software. BT sought to challenge Freeserve's business plan by arguing that under the regulatory model (known as Number Translation Services, or NTS), it should receive more money for each call, and in January 1999 Oftel announced that it would carry out a review.
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