Internet Access In the late 90's there were many free ISPs that displayed advertising on your screen in exchange for dialup Internet service. However, due to the falling Internet advertising market many of these have discontiuned service. Here are the survivors, rated based on their features, popularity, reputation, site design and other factors.

Free ISP Directories

free-internet.name

• This website offers a far more comprehensive directory of free ISPs than Digital Free Stuff could ever hope to amass. They have most of the regional and international ISPs listed with an informative and useful rating system.
  
  Free Internet
  
• Another website offering information about free ISPs. This website primarily deals with American nationwide free ISPs.
  
  Free ISPs
  
  NetZero Rating: 8/10
  
• One of the leading free ISPs, NetZero seems to be the most developed free Internet access provider around. They provide dialup 56k access paid for by sponsors in the "Zero Port" which also has useful information and is always open when you're online. In my opinion, NetZero seems likely to surrive the current troubles facing the free ISP market. Update: NetZero has reduced its free service to 10 hours per month.
  
  dotNow! Rating: 8/10
  
• DotNow appears to be doing well for a Free ISP, though there were a few dead links on their site. Their software that displays a banner that looks fairly reasonable.
  
  Xoasis Rating: 7/10
  
• Xoasis looks like a excellent service which offers standard dialup access without advertising or any special programs. However, they seem to be limited to the Pacific Northwest and New York City as of August 2002.
  
  Address.com Rating: 4/10
  
• From looking at the Address.com free Internet access page, it appears that they use "commercial breaks" to generate advertising revenue, which are simply full screen ads loaded periodically while browsing. Having singed up with Address.com services before, I know that they attempt to sign you up with other web services like Net Flip so I would not recommend Address.com
  
  NetValve Rating: 3/10
  
• While this may not be much of a freebie, I realize that free Internet access is rapidly dwindling, so you take what you can get. NetValve only offers you 3 hours for free (it's really a free sample - they want you to buy more access). However, it's worth something and no credit card is required.