h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Has anyone had any experience with www.4unet.co.uk?

They are offering permanent free internet access providing you pay 20 quid for a gadget that connects your BT phone line to their network. They claim no other charges other than your standard BT line rental, and you don't have to spend a certain amount on non-internet calls to get free access either. Their call charges are supposed to be 30% lower than BT as well.

Is this a con? Help! I'm so tempted to sign up.

I have to agree, 4Unet does sound very, very tempting, but I can't find any more information about it.
There has got to be someone that knows more.
Come on, anyone, please advise.

Ok here's what I found (and where I found it).
4unet is a rebadged service of callnet0800. The box I guess will be a dialer which prefixes all the calls with a 1XXX number for indirect access to a telecom company (not BT).

see http://www.theregister.co.uk/000314-000028.html and for more stories from The Ragister do a search on callnet0800 when you get there.

I have a friend in the computing industry who recently signed up for this and recommended it to me. I'm still sceptical but am willing to be convinced if my friend's experience proves postive. We'll see.

I work in the internet industry but i wont say who for...I pose one question...is anything in life free? i dont think so. The problems are:- 1.constant adverts (just a pain)
2.lack of good connections
3.you get kicked of quickly
These are just some of the problems you will find, I'm not saying dont try as there are people who can get on fine, but dot complain if you cant. Also its not realy free if you have to pay a subcription.... i'll let you decide, I know i wont be bothering

I've found BT Internet's £10 a month offer quite good... 18:00-24:00 weekdays and 24 hour weekends 0800 dialup... connection speed is good, you can always connect (although it may take two or three attempts at busy times) and whilst they do kick you off it's only every two hours. There aren't any adverts, and you don't need to do anything complicated to your phone...

I am, however, on the lookout for any offer which'll let me dial an 0800 number during the rest of the day, ie 0:00-18:00 weekdays. Any suggestions?

26199

Try WWW.X-STREAM.co.uk. They are running a free service 24-7 however it is very busy and you can't always get a connection.

Access can also be quite slow. You are normally limited to 2 hours connection

I use the BTinternet service too and I have to say I've been less than impressed. Fair enough to kick me off intentionally after 2 hours, after all it does prompt me to reconnect immediately - but I find my connection dropped unintentionally several times in each 2 hour period and download times are much slower than I get from Freeserve and other ISPs. Maybe BT are just not coping with demand but I'd expect a company with their experience to get things sorted out more quickly.

It's occurred to me that the CallNet0800 dialup works regardless of the network you are connected to. Therefore all I need is a valid username and password, and presto - free net access. I wonder how I can find one?????

Apparently, 4unet kick you off every hour. The download speed is pretty good (I've found someone who has signed up), but then they only have about 200,000 subs, so it'll probably get slower as more people join.

Do adverts really matter that much? Isn't it only on the providers home page, everything else on the net being exactly the same as with any other provider?

Poor connection would be a pain, sure, but when its free I wouldn't be too bothered about waiting a bit longer for a page to download.

Woohoo!!! I have 0800 dial up!

I've just signed up with x-stream. It's taken loads of dialling attempts, and I finally got through. It's a bit of a pain because I can't use auto-redial (BT cut in saying all the lines are busy, rather than an engaged tone, so my modem doesn't redial).

Anyway, its now two o'clock in the morning. It seems quite quick at the moment, but I'll try it again tomorrow. There's a little ad banner above ie5, but I don't really care! Its FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!! I haven't had to give any credit card details or anything. They claim a time out of two hours during busy periods, and unlimited during others, we'll see.......

I don't know how many times I'll have to redial to connect during the day, or how annoyingly slow it will be - watch this space......

It's nice to hear you can get on, but someone has said i wonder what will happen when it gets over sud'ed, still i get free access at work so i dont realy have anything to complain about.

I've been using X-Stream for a few weeks now, with mixed success. You can usually connect within a few tries in the evening, but in the daytime during the week, it's near enough impossible to get through. On the other hand, the savings I make from not paying for evening calls mean I don't mind paying local call rates for the odd daytime call.

The advertising banner turns out to be more of a problem than I expected: it's part of the desktop rather than the browser, and it moves all your windows down a little bit, which seems to make your vertical scrollbars bahave strangely. And if you've got an auto-hide toolbar at the top of your screen, you can't use it any more.

On the upside, I've only ever got fast connections from them.

Overall, I'd say it's worth doing - the disadvantages I've mentioned here are a tiny price to pay considering I'm saving around £70 per quarter on internet calls. Plus they say that it's still a trial service, which I suppose means they'll be installing new lines as time goes by.

I've been using 4unet for a couple of weeks now. The speed isn't brilliant but its not too bad. Being kicked off every hour is slightly annoying. But its free so you can't really complain too much.

Well, I've been trying all day, and the first connection I've got with X-stream is as of 6:10 pm. Its been permanently engaged previously.

I'm experiencing the same odd effect with the vertical scroll bars. The banner makes the pointer act about 20 pixels further down than it appears to be, but I can cope with that.

It still seems pretty quick. Hopefully they'll install some more lines soon.

I advise anyone against X-Stream for a couple of mnths until they get themselves sorted out. They have VERY few 0800 lines relative to the number of subscribers, and it is increasing. All lulled by the promise of FREE connection, but when u cant get it they r banking on u using THEIR 0845 number. I'll stick to Freeserve for the time being, BT's offer does not help those who need regular access during the day and they have offered a pretty poor service to their Internet customers consuidering their status, why oh why restrict people to using Outlook Express & not allow the full version to be used. Anyone know if this is still the case??

Besides the problems with Banners & adding permanent features to your descktop, they also alter your home & start pages with IE &/or Netscape. Just go Preferences (netscape) or Options (IE) & change it to what u want.

I'm willing to spend money on a Monthly subscription for the RIGHT service and that is
1. Access during the DAY
2. Reasonable ratio of Lines to Subscribers
3. No limits on my Browsing
4. No alterations to my Desktop without my Approval

what ISP's have you tryed??

Get onto NTLWorld. They have started free access as of Monday this week so long as your telephone calls are more than £10 per month (no problems there then.) If you're not already an NTL customer they do a deal for BT customers as well. No hassles no fuss, I've been on since Monday and you know exactly who you are connected to at all times.

The £10 minimum spend thing is for non-ntl customers only. If like me you have an ntl line, you don't pay a thing. No monthly subscription no minimum spend and no call charges. I'm trying desperately to find the catch, but there doesn't seem to be one. Got my CD on the 13th and, after admittedly a bit of a shaky start, it's been fine.
And, before anybody asks; No, I don't work for ntl!

>
>I advise anyone against X-Stream for a couple of mnths until they >get themselves sorted out.
>

Is that just a guess, or is there something official which says they are installing more lines in a couple of months?