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British retailer offers free Net access

Dixons, the United Kingdom's largest electronics retailer, has launched a free service it hopes will attract thousands of new users onto the Internet."This is the way we think the market is going," said Dixons Group Chief Executive Officer John Clare.
Written by Ken Young, Contributor
Dixons, the United Kingdom's largest electronics retailer, has launched a free service it hopes will attract thousands of new users onto the Internet.

"This is the way we think the market is going," said Dixons Group Chief Executive Officer John Clare. "We believe we can run a free service and still make a profit."

Dixons has teamed up with Planet Online and its owner Energis to offer the service.

CD distribution
CDs are available in its chains, including Dixons, Curry's, PC World and The Link, and allow new users to subscribe to the FreeServe service. The company said it thinks that saving the equivalent of $20 a month in access fees will appeal to British consumers, and analysts agreed.

"This is pretty significant and will be attractive to consumers," said Nick Gibson, senior analyst at Durlacher Research. "The key is that Dixons has 36 percent of PCs in the consumer sector and excellent distribution."

Subscribers will connect to the FreeServe site and get free POP3 e-mail addresses and 5 MB of Web space.

News, searching links
Dixons plans for the FreeServe site to become a high-traffic portal and currently offers news from PA New Media and links to search engines.

The company said it had not ruled out using registration details for marketing purposes.

X-Stream, the free London-based ISP that launched early this year has impressed industry analysts by attracting over 70,000 subscribers since its launch. X-Stream's managing director Paul Myers welcomed FreeServe's arrival: "Imitation is always flattering" he said, "but seriously, I do think this is good news because it will attract more people to the Internet and I think Dixons' distribution will be a great help to it."

ZDNN UK's Richard Barry contributed to this story.



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