By Darin Helfend
They have bitten off the hand that fed them.
Consumers hitchhiking their way through cyberspace on the Information Superhighway no longer have the luxury of a free ride - free unlimited Internet service per se, is dead.
Because of poor business planning and greedy customers, the majority of companies providing free Internet service have gone down in flames; however, rising out of the debris are three stalwarts with plans to revitalize this dying industry.
Juno.com, Bluelight.com and NetZero.com are the three remaining successful Internet companies that provide free Internet service, but the term 'free Internet' has assumed a new meaning.
'Some of the Internet services provided by these companies is free, but not unlimited,' said Gary Baker, vice president of public relations for Juno Online Service.
These companies have had to place restrictions on the number of hours consumers could be on-line each month without charging a monthly fee.
According to a study by PC Pitstop (www.pcpitstop.com), on the average, 12 percent of all free Internet traffic amounts to over 50 percent of the telecommunications costs of providing the free service.
Small numbers of users used the free service for their personal businesses, requiring constant on-line access, which was another reason these companies had to start charging for monthly service, according the PC Pitstop.
Internet advertising was the way these companies made the majority of their money, but the Web advertising business soon began to be unprofitable.
'None of the companies were able to draw enough users to lure much advertising,' said Joe Laszlo, an Internet industry analyst from Jupiter Research.
'When advertising slowed down earlier this year, the free ISPs saw their ability to generate money collapse,' he said.
Juno, Bluelight and NetZero are the largest providers of free Internet service because of their business strategies and market penetration, according to representatives from the companies.
Juno''s plan is two-fold - to provide free Internet access designed to appeal largely to newcomers on the Web, and then to upgrade these users to a billable Internet service with more options than the free service, Baker said.
The free service called the Juno Basic Plan includes e-mail and Web browsing capabilities, but users also have to deal with the Juno Guide, which is the advertising bar that cannot be removed from the screen during on-line use, Baker said.
Juno subscribers who want better access to the Internet may pay $14.99 for a service with fewer advertisements and a better on-line connection.
Juno has over 14.2 million registered subscribers of which 4 million are active. Of the active subscribers 842,000 are billable subscribers and 3.14 million use the free service.
NetZero also charges its users who go beyond the monthly limit on its free Internet service.
Bluelight.com offers a free Internet service, but users are restricted to 12 hours a month. If users exceed this amount they will be cut off and given the opportunity to pay $9.95 for reconnection in that month.
Bluelight.com is owned by the Kmart Corporation and runs under a business plan called Sticky Bricks, said Andrea Lim, public relations specialist for Bluelight.com.
'Sticky Bricks is a plan to fully integrate the on-line assets of Bluelight with the vast resources of Kmart,' Lim said.
'In January, Bluelight and Kmart Corporation completed the largest in-store Internet shopping kiosk network - more than 3,500 kiosks are available for use in 1,200 Kmart stores across the country,' she said.
Bluelight.com directs its users to its on-line shopping page to help facilitate on-line buying.