Local Free ISP Nixed in Buyout

About 2,500 area Internet users formerly served by GetOn4Free.com are now likely being absorbed by local ISPs. That’s the result of the Joplin, Mo., firm roaring “in like a lion” in March 2000 and going “out like a lamb” last spring.

A regional point-of-sale and marketing office for ISP Freewwweb.com, GetOn4Free.com’s goal was to bring free Internet access to thousands of customers in the Ozarks. During the first couple of months after its trumpeted March 18, 2000 debut, the firm said its Web site received about 10,000 hits from Northwest Arkansas.

But by early 2001, the company had only built its client base in Benton and Washington counties into about 2,500 subscribers. So when Juno.com, the nation’s free Web access leader, acquired Freewwweb.com a few months back as part of a national rollup, GetOn4Free.com lost its gateway. Terms of the buyout were not disclosed.

David Clymer, the former Joplin firm’s president, said GetOn4Free.com has since gone the way of most dot-coms during the past two years.

“When the bubble started to pop on the Internet money,” Clymer said, “most every free ISP burst along with it.”

Unlike Juno.com and Yahoo.com, which use pop-up ads to generate revenue, Freewwweb.com’s philosophy was to sell advertising space only on subscriber’s home pages. Once a user got onto the Web or into e-mail, the ads no longer appeared.

Nine ISPs based in Fayetteville, Springdale and Rogers handled about 30,000 dial-up customers in January 2001. About 83 percent of those, or 25,000, were served by Arkansas.net of Fayetteville.