Wet Pluto

The best things in life are free, so why shouldn’t your dial-up access be? Now that hundreds of Internet Service Providers (ISP) are competing for your business, you never have to pay. Here’s the rundown of everything you need to know.

Companies that provide free dialup access typically do not ask for subscription fees, monthly fees or setup fees. But you still have to pay for the time you are online, usually via your phone provider bill. This makes a lot of sense, if you only use the Internet every so often. Why pay for a regular subscription, when you never use the allowed number of hours?

Dial-up may be slower than more modern connection methods. However, if you only need to send and receive basic email and maybe read news online, 36kbps to 56kbps is good enough. And, since most free dial-up services support access numbers throughout the country and run on both 64k and 12k ISDN modems for Apple, Linux and Windows, you can access the Internet anytime, anywhere, with any computer – as long as there’s a working phone line.

ISPs offer free dial-up access for one simple reason: there’s a huge market. The majority of Americans still use dial-up connections. In fact in some places, only this kind of connection is available. That is why ISPs attempts to reach out to this demographic and differentiate from their competitors by waiving fixed monthly fees.

If you’re thinking about getting ISPs, you have nothing to lose. There is virtually no cash out on your part – you only pay your Internet use as you go. You should sign up for free dial-up access even if you already have DSL or a cable connection. Use it as a backup in case your main connection breaks down.