Some 350,000 US Net users have signed up for AltaVista's subscription free ISP FreeAccess in its first month of operation, the company said today.

As if to prove a point about the popularity of this new model ISP the search engine-come-Net access provider published research which reveals that a staggering 78 million adults in the US no longer want to pay for Net access.

In a survey of 1000 adults conducted on behalf of AltaVista by International Communications Research, it found that forty per cent of US Net users want subscription-free access to the Net.

What's more, it claims there are 15.8 million households with PCs that are not connected to the Internet - no doubt many of which are reluctant to do so because of the cost of monthly subscription charges.

"Connection costs are coming down and free access to the Internet for users with normal speed connections inevitably will become common in the next two to four years," said Charles Rashall, VP S&M at AltaVista.

"Overwhelming interest in AltaVista's FreeAccess service validates the demand for no-cost Internet connections with a quality service," he said.

Well, he would say that, wouldn't he... ®