Slashdot Mirror
AOL Not Alone In Subscriber Decline
E-Rock-23 writes "Our registration-hungry friends at the New York Times are running this article with a few more details on the AOL Subscriber Decline, covered in a recent /. post. And it looks like they aren't alone, as Earthlink and MSN are experiencing similar troubles. The article cites a major reason being that users "are buying broadband services offered by cable and telephone companies." Looks like broadband is finally gaining some significant ground with home users..."
Yeah, broadband is a nice upgrade. But I bet more people disconnected due to money than the need for speed.
Method of processing duck feet
Although I was with a local ISP, the cost of the 2nd phone line was $25.00 and my ISP was $15.00. Broadband through the cable company was $40.00 so it was a complete wash for a huge increase over 56k, why would I want to stay on dialup? They can thank all the baby bells for not wanting to go the "last mile" to give people a choice of providers.
As a former AOL employee, I still have an AOL account even though I find the service has ticked me off more than a few times but my wife can't really change her email address at this tmie. So we are like so many who just are waiting for the right time.
You can't stop the future, you can only simulate it by stopping progress
Thats why I bought a domain. My email address is permanent regardless of my provider. Changing emails is a real pain. ISPs rely on that - so they give great introductory offers, but raise the rates once they have you sucked in. With my own domain, I can changes ISPs painlessly.
I think the broadband push is one determining factor in changing from the powerhouse ISP's, but I also think users are *growing up* from AOL/MSN to using only their preferred browser. I consider AOL/MSN users to be novice and prefer to use these ISP's because of ease and simplicity. Now these users are gaining knowledge of the "internet" and have the ability to *surf* themselves without AOL/MSN pushing content to them directly.
string.Empty();
isn't what is used to be.
.swf files via E-Mail to 20 different friends and the like.
Here in Germany you can get a 128kBit up / 768 kBit down async line. The best a normal household can aford is 192 kBit up / 1536 kBit down async.
The problem is that as bandwidth goes up, quality of the net goes down.
I heard people saying: "Why should I not place these 2MB images on my website? It's downloaded with my DSL line in seconds."
And don't even try to tell these people what a thumbnail is.
It's just one example but you can find more of these. People sending 15 MB
SQL Slammer won't have had the effect of broadband coming to every home.
See my blog for my free opinions.
http://archive.nytimes.com/2003/02/03/technology/0 3ONLI.html
Excellent point on the mobile work force. I remember traveling with my laptop and struggling with horrible hotel-internet. If there is one good thing about national dial-up like MSN and AOL it is that I can go anywhere in the country and get access instantly.
If I were more of a mobile warrior, I would definitely have AOL or MSN.
--------
Free your mind.
With the coming of wireless internet, it even becomes simpler to share the net (you don't even have to dig or drill a line in the ground or wall for your ethernet cable). I think this also has some impact on the decline of dial-up subscriptions.
At $23.50/month, AOL has less customers than at $20.00/month.
...
Price goes up, quantity goes down-- that's a demand curve.
nb: There's other reasons for the decline too, AOL and MSN blow as ISPS and don't support linux and censor tons of content in the newsgroups, and break your Network Connections and
You're right on every count, except that it wont keep aol in business. AOL's business model depends on the fact that they will always be getting more subscribers. Even in AOL managed to keep everyone from leaving they would begin to lose money. The fact that people are leaving means big trouble for AOL. Mainly because they have a giant useless dial up ISP infrastructure. That infrastructure costs money, and if nobody uses it that's all loss. Sure there are a lot of idiots who keep paying for AOL after they get broadband. But unless AOL has a constant increase in membership they will have diminishing returns and eventually go bankrupt. They're still huge, so it wont happen soon, and they've still got a chance to save themselves.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Since I work alot with the public and their computers let me tell you what I think the biggest reason for the decline is.
90% of the houses I go to are for people who are upgrading and now want two computers. (Their old one + their new one) AOL requires a $20 subscription fee + more money for multiple screens and though you can have broadband and still use AOL they still charge an aol usage fee.... *yawn*
So they upgrade to broadband because that 56k stuff has to go and because it can easily service two computers, they buy a router, they leave AOL but download the messenger to stay in touch with their buddies. They migrate to using Outlook Express (cringe) But they also have norton so I guess thats ok... sort of.
Then they also cancel AOL + Second Phone Line and broadband is about the same price. Some even cancel their phone and do VoIP. (Its rare but there are some really good offers out there that even offer wireless phonejacks that you can sticky to your wall or plug into an outlet...)
I think this is a common feeling in the tech community without that much basis in fact. I used AOL for years and found it no worse than any other dialup service I had ever used - it was more expensive, but I could always get connected when I wanted to and never got dropped. (YMMV, of course)
IMHO, AOL gets a bad rap from the tech community because of the obscene amounts of script kiddies who run off their parents' accounts on it. Because it's so huge, it's also automatically evil to groups of techies who use Linux just because it's not Windows.
I think it is not just people using broadband. I think it also has to deal with the fact that people no longer need crutches online. AOL and MSN are really geared towards people who don't know too much about the Internet. When you get used to doing stuff on your own, those extras MSN and AOL provide become more of a nuiscance than anything else. At that point people usually go for a more basic ISP that gives you access to the Internet at a cheaper price with more reliable (as in easier to connect) service. There is a reason why people make fun of AOL users after all...
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
hhhmmm...let's...AOL and MSN both have propritary winblowz spyw^H^H^H^H clients. they loose many of their customers after the trial period as many don't want to pay for their advertisements, poor customer service, etc.
now let's look at my local cable provider. their network has been fairly reliable thus far. no software to install (though they do try and convince you to run their install program that puts their logo in the corner of IE and sets up your mail settings). my only REAL complaints with my cable service is that they block port 80, (because they don't want me to run a "server"...i guess they think a web server is the only type???) and i can only transmit at 128k while downstream is supposed to max out at 1.5M.
of course, i can live with those small irritations when i'm downloading the latest kernel source, mozilla, p0rn, and openoffice in a matter of min. instead of hours.
-frozen
I'm not always the brightest pixel in the stream
You can't say boradband via cable companies has a doomed future based on your singular personal experience, it just seemed ludicrous.
Ultimately, I think both technologies have about equal potential, with one beating the other depending on where you are.
DSL is offered by companies that typically have more experience in offering high-bandiwdth internet connections, so service and reliability I think is indeed, mostly better with DSL on average. However, as Cable companies have learned their lessons, it becomes harder and harder to distinguish the two. DSL still seems to typically offer better latency (around my area, at least), but cable services offer better throughput.
To home consumers, the fine details don't make much of a difference. Availability makes all the difference. I can't get DSL at any decent rate. None of my family can get it at all. I do, and my family could, all have cable modem at 2 megabit downstream, 768k up. In addition to that, a sort of unintended benefit of cable modem service is that there is a good chance the installer won't bother with a video filter and you get free cable with the net connection. I know, not a fair comparison because cable companies hate this, but realistically speaking, it must be considered.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Picture a production executive: "Why should I not agree to do this terrible movie? People will see it anyway." A theater owner: "Why should I not perpetrate the single largest price gouge that the average American sees over some kernels of 'popped corn' and sugar water? People will pay." A person in charge of showing the movie: "Let's put this movie in 8 screens, so everybody sees it all at once, and everybody forgets about it in 3 weeks. Then, let's do it again!"
The problem is that the problem feeds itself. So does this one. You know what the solution is? 'tis like a marketer's dream... More solutions! Bigger broadband, better broadband, different broadband!® And some will buy it, and some won't, and some will still be on dialup, but it will be different, and that's good, right?
You're right. But once you let the average person into something, they usually ruin it.
What this shows is simply that the AOL model of bundling connectivity with content is failing.
We all knew it would... it makes some sense to use content to sell connectivity. But that means you have to either break even or lose money on the content, otherwise your connectivity will be overpriced.
Another approach is the revers... using connectivity to sell content. Again, same situation... you couldn't make money on connectivity.
AOL's early success convinced a lot of people that there was some natural synergy between the two. There's isn't. AOL's business model (and the Time merger) are based on the theory that by combining the two, they could make more money on content AND more money on connectivity. Can't work.
Even more amazing is the number of companies that saw the growth of AOL and concluded that bundling the way to go. Excite@home was one of the most spectacular failures that was fueled by this erroneous analysis.
Geesh, I use to work for an ISP out west and had to deal with a baby bell.. People complain about the price of dsl being 2x more than dial up, so what, with up to 50x faster speeds that's a good deal if you ask me personally. You really have no idea how much money needs to be put into it every month just to turn a profit from the ISP's standpoint, especially when they are a reseller of DSL through a CLEC/ILEC. First off reselling DSL makes you target numero uno on the phone companies list, you're digging into their profit. If they charge $39 for a circuit and $1 for their internet that's $40.. Well the ISP has to pay for that $39 too or the customer does going through the ISP depending on how billing is structured. An ISP can not afford taking a hit by charging $1 to a customer for access, it's just not feasible. The phone company can charge so little for dsl because even in not making a profit on it they have you locked in as a subscriber plus make it up in high phone service charges. In the DSL world 200 subscibers on a T1 is just not feasible as it will saturate it, but a T3 or DS3 will do the trick, that's alot of money a month for that pipe, at a $1 a customer = $200/mo in charges. Show me where you can even find a T1 for $200/mo off of a reputible company. This is why there are fly by night ISP's they simply CAN NOT compete with that pricing so they have to charge more. Also there is alot more involved with the biggers companies screwing reseller isp's that the normal consumer has no clue about and these things do happen as I have been witness and victim to them first hand. Just a thought for everyone