WEB PORTAL OFFERS FREE NET ACCESS

Leading World Wide Web search portal AltaVista says it's now offering consumers free Internet access. The tenth-ranked stop on the Web, AltaVista becomes the first brand-name Internet firm to offer free unlimited Net access, AltaVista FreeAccess, hoping to lure consumers from America Online and other top Net providers such as Microsoft MSN, Earthlink, and Mindspring. To sign, users must provide demographic information such as their ages, sex, and ZIP codes, as well as their online shopping habits and favorite stops on the Web. FreeAccess will use this information to customize advertising sent to users. `Why continue to pay $240 a year when you can get a perfectly good service for free that meets your needs?'' sales and marketing vice president Charles Rashall tells the Associated Press.

Not everyone is thrilled with the prospect, though. Critics argue that free Internet access means poorer customer service and an endless stream of ads on computer screens, which consumers do not normally like, in addition to those already saturation-bombing many Web pages.

U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray financial analyst Hany Nada says free access still means a consumer paying in the sense of being forced to look at advertisements. `If I could pay an extra ten bucks a month to avoid watching commercials on TV, then I would,'' Nada says. Free Net access has at best a hit-and-miss history. The concept is popular in Europe, increasingly, but only a million in 63 million dial online for free in the United States. And one of the early pioneers in free Net access, Bigger.net, went out of business recently.