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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..."
It could be the internet is just losing ground in general. and that's a Bad Thing.
on an unrelated note, i just built a computer in an old cardboard fruit box. wee!
....the big 3 ISPs have seen the writing on the wall for a LONG time, yet they continued to expand their POTS infrastructure...ESPECIALLY earthlink. They better figure it out really freaking quick that when users find out that they can work just a little harder to find the same content through a non-branded ISP, they are going to drop their asses in droves. Looks like they already are. AOL has the potential infrastructure through Time Warner Cable...Earthlink has been able to finesse some cable sharing deals, but MSN going the DSL only branding route is going to lose if they don't sign some cable sharing deals.
I don't get it, are they surprised? AOL costs 25$ a month. In my area you can get get DSL for 38$ so I don't think it should come as a surprise that people would go for a connection ten times as fast that didn't require the worst designed software on earth for an extra 13$. AOL has been robbing people for the past 5 years, they kept their prices jacked up because they could and had a corner on the market.But I doubt AOL is really noticing too much of a hurt, because I have noticed idiots who get broadband and still pay for AOL as well. People are dumb and that will keep AOL and MSN in business for a long time.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
I was one of EarthLink's earlier subscribers, and appreciated its services, which were quite reliable.
My business needs required something faster than dial-up, so when EarthLink offered DSL, I applied. At the time, however, DSL wasn't available for my part of the city (a medium-large midwestern one--think race cars), so Time Warner Cable's RoadRunner service was my only option.
Today, as a result of court agreements and such, EarthLink and AOL can provide their services through cable and DSL options, but the carriers (the cable and phone companies that own these lines) don't advertise the options much, from what I see.
I use Comcast High-Speed service today, which works OK, but they have tech support that's about as bright as a bag of coal.
I agree that the Internet was a fascination for some, and now a relatively expensive one to those who don't use it much. So, many of the users who've signed off are probably the "sightseers."
High-speed access is still a bit too expensive for most, despite the faster speeds. Paying twice to 2.5 times as much isn't a strong marketing point.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
Given that my chances of getting a job are seriously linked to my staying up to date on recent technologies so that I can blag my way through the interview, I'd say the ADSL is going to be the last thing to go...
The closed nature of their networks mean that independent ISP's (even the monster Earthlink) will no longer be able to compete with phone companies. Here in CT, the nearest competitor to SBC DSL has to charge at least $20 more than the service from the phone company. They rent the DSL services from the telco, making it impossible for them to compete. The days of infinite ISP choices are sadly over.
www.lonseidman.com
Ok, so with the number of cable broadband subscribers going up, it makes sense that the cable companies can finally (hopefully) start collecting on those economies of scale. So when will we start to see the price stabilize? Or are we stuck with endless rate increases a la cable television?
I've already given up on DSL from the phone company (Good luck getting competitition-inducing rates from those guys.)
IMHO community run broadband (see this link) and other means like this are the only hope we have of keeping prices reasonable.
Erp, did I just come out in favor of regulating Internet pricing?!?
The question I see is, if the RIAA's intimidation/anti-consumer tactics (or DRM-etc) gain significant ground, and downloading mp3s, movies, etc becomes too difficult, will home users really need a 300kbps connection? (I'd never go back to a 56k modem that never connected faster than 22k, but that's just me).
Actually, now that I wrote that, I think they do--who knows what else will take the place of them though. A real-time slashdot feed perhaps?
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
A few weeks ago I got a mailing from Earthlink saying I could save $5 by switching my cable internet service from MediAT&Comcast to Earthlink. Aside from the $5 difference, I could not find a reason to switch, and the $5 is tiny compared to what I'm paying for the service in the first place.
If Earthlink had a different TOS (I could have servers, for example), then I might consider switching. If the only change is I have to install Earthlink software instead of ATTBI software, then it's rather pointless, isn't it?
I honestly don't think that sharing broadband is the primary motivation for most people. Sharing a single computer for Internet access is acceptable until you get used to every computer in the house being networked. And I've seen some SOHO routers that had a serial port for connecting to an external modem.
I think broadband's big advantages for the non-technical user is convenience and (relative) value. Having an always-on connection is much nicer than waiting for a modem to dial (and possibly redial)... and the phone line isn't "in use" with broadband. Also, paying $40-$100 a month for broadband is easy to justify based on speed; while it may not be 30 times faster, you can do more with broadband simultaneously than you can with dialup.
Being able to toss a router between my LAN and cable modem is a major benefit to having broadband, but I doubt that the average would be capable of doing it without help.
Every time I think that, I remember back to the time when it took forever to download an ISO
For the $35/month I'd be saving, I could just buy copies from CheapBytes and still come out ahead.
downloading a single fansub off of the usenet wasn't feasable because the parts would expire before I got them downloaded
I'm not familiar with what that is, but I don't download binaries from usenet, anyway.
It really comes down to the fact that I basically only check email and read a handful of websites anymore. I don't download the latest game demos or much else. Sometimes I download Gnome or KDE or something, but I could just let it run for a few days. Wouldn't bother me that much.
I hope I don't get in trouble for saying this. I know Congress is very concerned about the slow adoption of broadband.
I don't know how well cable (comcast) is going to develop - for two months they failed to show up to even install the line - so I went with Verizon DSL and the service has been fast enough for my tastes (used to a university ethernet!)...anyway I just finished doing some private home wireless networking jobs for small business people buying dsl for their homes and wiring all their XP machines together. I get the feeling the at very least DSL (cheaper and NOT the cable company) is about to score BIG with the cheap wireless products you can pick up anywhere nowadays.
~frank
"Other bands play, but Manowar KILLS"
I thought one of the principal arguments used to support the DMCA was to speed the acceptance of broadband. As I recall, the rationale was that the additional protection for digital media distributions would spur the offering of digital content. In turn, this would increase the incentives for consumer adoption of broadband.
With very little in the way of conventional entertainment available (the RIAA has killed most and movies don't exist), an increase in broadband acceptance appears independent of the incentive. All that really happened was the consumer got shafted.
The little guy just ain't getting it, is he?
For example my mother was paying $20/month for a second phone line and $20/month for her ISP. We got rid of her second phone line and the ISP for a cable modem that costs the same, $40/month.
Another phenomenon that phone companies and ISP's have to worrying about is people not having a landline at all. Most people I'm friends with (age 22-28) do not have a landline, but instead use a cell phone exclusively. There are lots of benefits of using a cell phone only. For people with roommates, you don't have to worry about splitting up the phone bill or dealing with calling cards. On a cost basis, I would rather pay $75 for a really good cell plan than a landline with no long distance for $40 and a cheap cell plan for $35.
Most of the people who I know who use a cell phone exclusively are also cable modem subscribers. Those who are not, just use work for personal Internet access. Of the people I do know with landlines, most of them have to have them in order to dial-in to their company's network because of the absence of a Internet VPN.
I've been landline free for three years now, with no regrets.
or anyone else is a BAD THING. As your local cable/dsl provider gets a strangle hold on the market you can be sure the prices will GO UP not down. We are seeing it with cable TV already, in area's that ATT is a monopoly are already seeing a rise in cost while they CUT services...De-regulation is everybodies friend...NOT. SBC is already larger than it was before the government called it a monopoly and broke the bells apart...Thanks Bush
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I run a small business and use email to notify my clients. I send out 50, or so, emails once a week.
Unfortunately, 1/2 my customers use AOL and AOL has a really nasty habit of silently dumping some, but not all, email from other ISP's. So, a couple of days after I had sent out the weekly notice, I would get calls from some of my clients saying they hadn't gotten their weekly status report. Dicking around with Sbcglobal over several months wasn't getting me anywhere so I finally bit the bullet and bought an AOL account just so I could reliably reach my clients.
I'm not happy about it but I don't have the time to sort out AOL-Sbcglobal email incompatibilities. What really is annoying is that it was only my AOL clients that had problems getting their email reliably.
If I was smart, (that's a big if ), I'd stop using email and have my customers go to my website to get their weekly status reports. Then when they complain about how slow AOL's browser is I can steer them to a non-AOL solution and earn a referral fee. The fee isn't worth much but getting more people off of AOL certainly is attractive after all the grief I've had from AOL.
Most people who have the option wait to do some of their surfing at work on a fast connection. For people who don't have that option, they must pay for a faster connection or accept that some web content and services will be barely usable or unavailable.