Opinions on NetZero as a dial up ISP?

[RamboLiberal]

Just curious - I was thinking of switching from MSN both for price and for Netzeros claims of high speed dial up access.

I'm not ready yet to pay higher prices at home for DSL or Cable.

I know NetZero used the wrong spokesperson in Dennis Miller for many DU'ers, but still I'd like an honest opinion of their worth as an ISP.

[tkmorris]

1. Very Negative

First of all I assume you have seen and are referring to NetZero's recent television ad campaign for it's NetZero 3G service. It claims to be superior to regular dial-up, in fact they say it has "speeds so fast you won't believe it's not DSL".

Those claims are just plain false. There is nothing innovative about how NZ accelerates dial-up, in fact they are rather behind the curve in implementing such technologies. All they are doing is offering regular dial-up with a twist. Whenever you are surfing and you request a webpage the page first goes through one of NetZero's servers which compress certain types of files, thus decreasing the total download to you. A typical webpage containing mostly text and a few small pictures in jpg format might originally be about 40k but you will only need to download 10k once NZ compresses it. Nothing innovative about that, AOL for example has been doing this for years.

The downside is that files like MP3's, any video format such as wmv, and other multimedia type files are not compressed and thus NZ is no faster. Furthermore, when most of the image are compressed they lose so much image quality that the result isn't worth the time savings. Don't just trust me though, here's a couple of sites offering insight into NZ's 3G service. http://blog.sosdg.org/bruns/archives/163-Netzero-3G-Myth.html
http://onehop.com/news/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=226

I've heard a few other stories about the quality of NetZero's service and their reliability and let's just say it wasn't good at all, but that is 3rd hand information obviously. I can say that I have had experience with a few local phone companies that provide dial-up as well (bellsouth for example) and you can often receive a package savings by bundling dial-up with your phone sevice or what have you. In addition their services tend to be as reliable as anyone's, certainly better than NZ's is reputed to be. I'd look into those myself.

Another option might be to bundle your satellite television provider with satellite internet access. DishNetwork used to have a bundle they offered wherein if you subscribed to their programming you could receive a decent discount on Earthlink DSL or dial-up, IIRC.

[RamboLiberal]

2. Thanks for the info on Netzero

Very insightful. I'll check out the links you posted.

[Crazy Guggenheim]

3. Too much adware and the connections aren't that good.

Customer service sucks. Try Earthlink.

[idiosyncratic]

4. Try www.intergate.com. Only $9.95 per month.

I never get busy signals and am on all day long. They also offer 100 email addresses . . . not that I know why anyone would need that many.

I have my own website with no ads.

[longship]

5. Try to find a locally owned/operated ISP.

I am using KeyWay Internet Services here in SoCal. They are both very reliable and have very liberal policies. I buy bandwidth, connection, and static IP from them. Then, they make no demands or restrictions on my use. I can run servers, or anything I want. You won't find that with a national provider.

So get out your phone book and shop around a bit.