I'm not 100% sure but, I remember when we got our Wii in June 07 we could get on the internet no problem. But I remember that this facility disappeared, I think in July or August because you have to subscribe (no surprises there then) not sure how much it costs, we can now get the internet again without subscribing, but I think this is because we had the Wii chipped and the feature returned all of a sudden. Again, I'm not the most technical in our house, so this might be wrong, but this was the gist I was getting.