AOL To Be Purchased By T-Online?

Sique writes "The german newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung reports on its website, that the german ISP T-Online wants to buy AOL. The article is titled American Dream, but the actual wording is german. Ask the fish for help." There's also the article in Der Spiegel about the potential purchase as well; you can also check out T-Online's site.

Comments

So..

[rf0]

Does that mean they would be called Time Warner Aol T-Online or TWAT for short? :)

Rus

Uh Huh

[Talisman]

"...german ISP T-Online wants to buy AOL..."

I want to buy AOL, too. I just don't have the money for it...

Talisman

Pretty soon you'll be hearing...

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

Sie haben Post (You've got mail)

Incredible

[arvindn]

They're thinking of a purchase price of a mere $ 1 billion. That's less than a hundredth of what Time warner acquired them for 2 years ago!

They're all alike (was: Re:hacker haven ...)

[Qbertino]

AOL got security? What's that? An inhouse media player replacement?

Honestly, when it comes to security or any other area that requires basic brain function I'd say the big ISPs are a all the same: Utterly useless.

It's countless times I've called the T-Online Hotline, asked if their mail server was down or the TDSL dialin node was down or some other informal question and every time I've gotten something like this:

Blockhead:"What's your error message?"

Me:"I don't think my error messages are of any use to you."

Blockhead:"What Mailer do you use?"

Me:"*SIGH* K-Mail."

Blockhead:"We only support Outlook or Netscape."

[Meanwhile down in Hell: Satan marks up another Eternity Candidate]

Me:"I know.(I'm not gonna explain to him that E-Mail is a Service while Outlook and Netscape are Mailers and what that all means) I actually just wanted to know if you Mailserver is down."

Blockhead: "What Windows do you use?"

Me: "I use Linux."

Blockhead: "Oh. Well, we don't support Linux." (NOTE THE SIGNIFICANCE: We're in Germany, so he's actually heard the word 'Linux' before)

[Back in Hell: Satan marks Mr. Blockhead up for extra special skinning, boiling and chainsaw subdividing treatment upon arrival.]

Me: "I know.(I'm certainly NOT gonna explain the difference between an Internet Service and an OS to him) I just wanted to know if you Mailserver is down... Could I speak to second level please?"

Blockhead: "Well, all I can say is that due to our troubletickets the Mailserver is up and running and second level won't tell you anything different."

Me: "Thank you very much".

*KLICK* *Duuuuu* (german dialtone)

I seriously doubt it is _any_ better with AOL right now.

Re:They're all alike (was: Re:hacker haven ...)

[Shakrai]

Hahahahaha, I used to go though that with my old dialup ISP after the local teleco bought them out. They had messed up DNS configurations (A records for the IPs but no PTRs) that made using ssh and irc (amoung other things) range from a general pain in the ass to nearly impossible.

Have you ever tried to explain to a Level 1 tech how DNS works? "Sorry, we don't support IRC or Linux sir.". After a couple of weeks yelling at them I finally got to talk to the manager of the tech. support ppl and get a name of the head tech guy at corporate to complain to.

Called him up and explained the principal of correctly configured DNS. Problem was fixed two days after that. I no longer use Frontier at home, but my company has a commercial DSL line with them in one of our satellite offices. That can be a fun call to Level 1 too...

Me: Is your DSL in Whitney Point down?
Blockhead: What lights on your router are on?
Me: I don't know, I'm not in that office. Just tell me, is the service down or not?
Blockhead: What OS are you running?
Me: (sighing) Linux, we run a VPN setup
Blockhead: We don't support that.
Me: Actually yes, according to your sales people, you _do_ support VPNs. All I need to know is if the service is down and when it is expected to come back up.
Blockhead: Sir, we don't support non-standard operating systems.
Me: Do you support ICMP Pings? Because I can't ping my box. Is the connection down or not?
Blockhead: I don't know what that is. What lights are on your router?
Me: Let me talk to your supervisor please.

I'm also famous for calling in and demanding a supervisor right off the bat...

Blockhead: Thank you for calling [insert company name here] support, my name is Steve, how may I help you?
Me: Let me talk to a supervisor please.
Blockhead: Sir I can help you.
Me: Steve, you don't want to help me. Let me talk to your supervisor please.
Blockhead: No, sir I can help you.
Me: Ok you asked for it... [begin running explanation of how to maintain an ISP with decent uptimes, explain my experience in the ISP business and the uptimes we managed when I was running things, explain how much money my company pays for this connection, which currently appears to be down, regardless of what lights on my router are currently on, off or blinking]
Blockhead: Let me get my supervisor for you sir....

Ah, sometimes I actually take a twisted form of pleasure in it ;) How sad is that?

NNNNooooooooo Not *that* jingle!

[Space cowboy]

T-mobile are the only company in the history of humanity to have a more-annoying jingle to their adverts than intel.

God I hate that jingle.

Simon

Blame babblefish

[mackman]

The actually story says T-Online is going to buy an AOL account. The 1 billion dollar price tag is a little steep, but that's what happens if you go over your 10,000 free hours in the first month.

Re:Already denied...

[pmz]

"expand and conquer"

Those Germans really need a new business model.

Write to your congress critter to stop this!

[Zhe Mappel]

Tell your representative that we need a bill to keep America Online...American!

Tell him or her that you don't want to see any further loss of American jobs in important sectors of the economy -- like producing endlessly wasteful sign-up CD-ROMs, policing the speech of adults as if they were children, and shoveling load after load of unwanted ads down the throat of miserable subscribers!

(P.S. Dear Germans: would you mind buying Microsoft, too?)