It's only a matter of time, and that time has clearly come.

After their early start as mostly down-market publications, free newspapers are branching out as their numbers multiply around the world, and one sure direction is upmarket, to compete with the most respected high-end dailies in their markets.

In recent weeks, London has been abuzz over talk that an upscale daily was being prepared for launch, this one headed by a former editor of the weekend Financial Times, to be called The Day and to compete with papers like the Guardian and The Times of London.

But even if The Day doesn't get off the ground, the belief is that another freesheet aimed at the upper end of the market will. And existing freesheets are expected to push upmarket as well.

“The quality of free newspapers will increase more and more,” says Aura Jordan, an analyst with iMedia Advisory, a newspaper consultancy company in Ireland. “They tried the cheap version, small newsroom and the newswire articles. Now they are going to more sophisticated concepts in which they produce more content."

That's already happening in the U.S., where free papers like the Examiner chain are beginning to recruit editorial talent from top paid dailies and bring on name columnists as contributors.

“With competition rising, free dailies do get more diverse,” says Piet Bakker, professor of media at Hogeschool Utrecht, a university in the Netherlands. He points to launches in niches such as sports and financial, as well as papers coming out in the evening and offering home delivery.

He also notes the trend of freesheets coming to look and read more like quality papers, as they're called in Europe.

Bakker cites Frettabladid, a free daily in Iceland, as probably the first attempt at a free daily that approaches a traditional quality paper, and he notes a sister publication in Denmark, Nyhedsavisen, is heading in the same direction.

The majority of these titles are relatively new to the market, so it's hard to say whether they'll succeed. Certainly, there are lots of doubters.

The key barrier to free papers has always been advertiser acceptance, or lack of. The early free sheets, such as the Metro chain in the U.S., broke through that barrier by offering advertisers rates well below those charged by the traditional paid dailies.

“The free model is now widely accepted. Before Metro there was a stigma in terms of what is thrust out there in people’s hands. Now planners, buyers and consumers appreciate there is value in free content,” says Mark Gallagher, print director at Manning Gottlieb OMD in London.

The question is whether it will work with a high-end daily. The higher one goes up the advertising food chain, the more particular the advertiser is about environment. They want to be among other quality advertisers, and in a quality publication, which has traditionally meant paid, if not pricey.

But signs are that resistance is fading even at that level. Just last week, a new weekly free publication targeting upscale men, called ShortList, launched in Britain with strong support from media buyers and advertisers.

But there are other challenges facing upscale freesheets, and one is in distribution.

To date, successful freesheets have tended to serve specific regions, notes Dayna Slate, media manager at Carat in London. But quality papers tend to be national in their focus. Building a national focus means national distribution, and that ups costs considerably.

Then comes the issue of how to get that free upscale paper in people's hands. With downmarket papers, that's easy. Stick it in commuters' hands as they're boarding a train or bus.

For an upscale paper, it would mean eyeing the crowd of commuters and only sticking the publication in the hands of those who look the part, well-dressed, educated, literate. And that would be an impossible task, says Gallagher.

Bakker, too, says that distribution could prove tricky. Most of the free dailies that have sought to go upmarket have turned to home delivery, distributing to high-income neighborhoods. That's been the model of the Examiner chain in the U.S. But there's a drawback here too: low readership per copy.

Ultimately, it gets down to economics, which means creating a business model that works, then finding the backing to support a launch. And in the case of a free daily, with no circulation revenue coming in--traditionally 25 percent of total revenue for UK papers--that would mean lots and lots of capital.

"I can’t imagine how they would do it,” says Dan Pimm, head of press at Universal McCann. “They would have to have huge backing.”