Bluelight ended their free basic service on August 29, 2001. Instead they are offering service for $8.95 per month.
On Nov. 5, 2002, United Online (which owns Juno and NetZero) announced that it had completed the acquisition of the Internet access assets of Bluelight.com from Kmart. As such, the price is going up to $9.95 and the service is expected to be the same as that offered under the Juno and NetZero brands. Therefore, if you are interested in these ISPs, it may be best to sign up for Juno Platinum or NetZero Platinum directly.
As part of the changes, they no longer offer free toll-free technical support. Like Juno and NetZero, they now charge $1.95 per minute for support.
UPDATE: Bluelight ended their free basic service on August 29, 2001. Instead they are offering service for $8.95 per month. When they switched to a paid service they began offering unlimited internet access (there used to be a 12 hour / month limit). It isn’t the same ad banner as with the free service, but you have a Kmart task bar that you cannot remove. (For some users the Kmart banner is gone, while others report it is still there. Perhaps it is dependent on the version of the software you are running.)
Many users report reliability problems with the Bluelight internet service. Customer support is also poor or virtually non-existent most of the time. One benefit of Bluelight used to be that the software is available on free CDs at many Kmart stores. However, it doesn’t seem like almost any stores carry the CDs any more, so you are stuck with the long download if you want to use their service.
Bluelight’s free isp service had been powered by Spinway. When Spinway ceased operation due to bankruptcy, Bluelight acquired select assets of Spinway so they could continue to offer free internet access. Now they are using the network to offer discount internet access.