Freeserve

Infobox_Company
company_name = Freeserve.com plc
company_
company_type = Defunct
company_slogan =
foundation = 1998
location = Hemel Hempstead, England, UK
industry = Internet & Communications
products = Internet service

Freeserve was a UK Internet Service Provider, founded in 1998. It merged into the Wanadoo group in 2000, itself a subsidiary of France Telecom. Its successor to this day is Orange Home UK, the ISP operation of Orange UK.

History

Freeserve was a UK Internet Service Provider, founded in 1998 from a 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.) 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 they would carry out a review ^{[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/255200.stm]} .

Freeserve floated on the stock market in July 1999 (as Freeserve.com plc), at which point they had approximately 1.5 million subscribers and were valued at between £1.31bn and £1.51bn ($2.02bn and $2.34bn) ^{[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/the_company_file/391480.stm]} .

By September 2000, Freeserve had more than 2 million active subscribers ^{[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/945842.stm]} . This was vastly more than the incumbent telephone provider BT, something that was unique for a European ISP.

Freeserve used notoriously long email addresses. With the format [e-mail], for example, Dave Smith would have the email address, [e-mail]. Original Freeserve customers have kept their long email addresses to this day.

Rebrandings

Freeserve was bought by the France Telecom-owned company Wanadoo in 2000 for £1.65bn ($2.37bn) and changed its name to Wanadoo UK plc on April 28 2004. ^{[http://wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk/46d6968cb298af59873c5ebcb4030945/compdetails]} .

Following a rebranding exercise in June 2006, Freeserve and Wanadoo UK now form part of the UK operation of Orange, and are known as Orange Home UK plc.

The Freeserve legacy is still visible in the name of Orange's free web-based email service, [http://fsmail.net fsmail.net] , in which fs stands for FreeServe.

Criticism

In August 2007, Orange started a process referred to as the "Night of the long juicer" to purge unused Freeserve accounts from its system. ^{[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/30/orange_freesever_purge/]}

Originally Freeserve accounts would be deactivated after 90 days if the dial-up number was not accessed (hence not generating any revenue for Orange). Customers would then receive an error message when trying to access their Freeserve email via another connection, but could reactivate the account before it was deleted by simply visiting the Orange website.

Orange extended the deactivation period to 260 days in 2007 but under the new regime users' accounts and all email are deleted permanently from Orange's servers without any warning to the end users.