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Copycats
Eircom Launches Free ISP
1430 Hrs 14 October 1999
Since other players in the Irish internet business have tested the waters of the Free ISP market, Eircom formerly known as Telecom Eireann has decided to jump in with a Free ISP version of Eircom. Netgains posted an article announcing Eircom's new free ISP on Monday.
The ISP offers access to the internet via a local rate phone number. The thinking is completely derivative as is the name. Indigo, an ISP that Tinet/Eircom bought in a numbers deal a few years ago, uses the name GoFree for its Free ISP service. The logo on Eircom.net's page was "Go Further for Free".
However Eircom seemed to be testing some of it in public. A webmail interface was visible. Earlier on Monday morning, the login was via a cgi-bin/login.cgi script. Now it appears to have changed to a php3 script.
Though the free service from Eircom went live this morning (Thursday 14th), it still has some problems. The news server that they specify in the settings does not exist. A dig on both Eircom's primary and secondary DNS revealed that the entry for news1.eircom.net had not even been added to the zonefile. The standard Tinet news server, news1.tinet.ie still exists.
It is an interesting situation here. The free ISP model is based on a large market. That market does not exist in Ireland and there are some key differences between the UK and Ireland. The UK has low cable penetration (circa 20%) whereas Ireland is in the top league with 80% penetration.
As the cable companies here get into internet access in the next few years, the access to the market will be trimmed considerably for free ISPs. They will be largely relegated to the non-cabled and non-MMDS areas. Then of course RTE want to employ their digital terrestrial television system with internet access and its return path over the air. RTE have about a 95% coverage. Free ISPs will have to mutate to a single national access number (as soon as the ODTR/Eircom fiasco is sorted out) with a heavy emphasis on advertising.
Free ISPs may last in Ireland but not quite in the same state as they are in now. Of the those currently operating in the market, the most vulnerable is Oceanfree. The others are well backed by revenue generating services whereas Oceanfree is merely an poorly localised version of Murdoch's LineOne operation.
The new service from Eircom offers unlimited e-mail addresses and 20 MB of webspace (the premium or subscription user gets 100 MB of webspace. The e-mail addresses are @eircom.net so Eircom has effectively diluted its brandname. Indigo on the other hand uses @gofree.indigo.ie to identify free ISP users.
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