Services that dial-up users access for electronic mail and a range of information services. Some are restricted to information access, such as Lexis-Nexis, while the more general services such as CompuServe and AOL, also offer email, computer conference and WWW access. At one time many of these services used proprietary software and did not allow Internet access. The dividing line between these and Internet services is blurring.
A service that you can subscribe to (monthly or hourly usage fees), that may provide e-mail, bulletin boards, games, news, weather, encyclopaedias and, with some, a connection to the Internet. Examples include: Microsoft Network (MSN), America-Online (AOL) and CompuServe.