With the demise of Globalfreeway this week, the collapse of Free Net last October and a move towards fees by the remaining few, where is the free ISP model heading in Australia?
"No one sees it as a threat anymore, they're dead," www.consult.com analyst Richard Gillis said.
According to Gillis, the free ISPs position in the market has been viewed as a secondary ISP, used by customers as a backup service to ISP's such as BigPond, OzEmail and Optus@Excite.
"They are just a backup if something happened with the primary ISPs," he said.
Gillis says free ISPs are now focusing on other revenue streams rather than just advertising models and moving gradually to a pay-for-service model.
"The free ISP model has had its day," he said.
"You can provide a free service, but how much money are you going to burn along the way because of the advertising model. User bases of free ISPs is not a particularly attractive market."
The last surviving free ISPs in the country include GoConnect, Free Online and smaller ISP, Free2Air.
"With Free Online, the part of it that's free is minimal," Gillis said.
One source - who preferred to remain anonymous - told ZDNet Australia that Free Online's customer base dropped from 120,000 users to 80,000 in just four months.
Free Online was unavailable for comment.
Hello zdnet,
I totally agree with the isps that they are all dead. i only use goconnect and that is really shocking. you get disconnected every hour. only 10 hours per month it's really a joke. There is not one isp in australia that provides good quality access is reliable and is FREE!!! In the U.S.A there is about 50 free isps and australia there are none without restrictions. Australia ISPS are never going to be free. Help us!!!!