The 'Freeserve 700' (12 October 2000) There has been a lively discussion on our mailing list and Forum about Freeserve's decision to remove about seven hundred 'heavy users' from its 24 hour a day, seven days a week [24/7] unmetered service with a month's notice. There are two principal schools of thought: The removals are not justified because a service advertised as unmetered 24/7 is precisely that; anyone who wishes to use the service for that amount of time, no matter what they actually do with it, must be able to do so without let or hindrance. If people take advertising at face value the advertiser can have no realistic complaint. The removals are justified because people who are online for such enormous amounts of time must be doing something inappropriate, such as using the connection for business. The first is very much the majority view and is supported by, among others, the Consumers' Association. Some further points: We are back to the old issue of unmetered services almost always being underpinned by metered connectivity to some extent. Even FRIACO probably costs an Internet Service Provider money if one user is tying up one modem port 24/7; it is likely that AOL will have to rein back heavy users. It would be useful for a court case to be brought by one of those affected. This would clarify many matters, such as the validity of the contractual 'abuse clause' - and the contract itself - which Freeserve used to justify the removals. We have long worried over the legalese, often clicked through on a Web page with no signature or security at either end, which Internet Service Providers use. Similarly, we encourage you to complain to the Advertising Standards Authority about advertised 24/7 unmetered services which turn out not to be; this will eventually clarify how 24/7 services with enforced 'abuse clauses' can actually be described. There have been mutterings about 'these people should be using ADSL'. In principle, yes; in practice, no, because: Many, possibly even most, of the seven hundred will not have exchanges enabled for ADSL at the moment. We do not know how many can afford ADSL; we are certain that not every one can. Although it always amazes us that anyone should try to run a server or servers using a narrowband connection, it is likely that many were doing so. At the moment the USB version of ADSL, at least, does not allow [Q55] subscribers to run servers, which seems counter-productive.