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

hacker haven just got larger

[UnderAttack]

T-Online got probably the most useless abuse department of all major ISPs. I wonder what they will do to AOL? Gut whatever security they got to make it profitable?

Already denied...

[DarkDust]

According to Heise online this has already been denied by T-Online (sorry, German only).

Basically, what they are saying in that news article is that some spokesman from T-Online claims buying AOL would be "economical nonsense". But T-Online has about 4 billion Euro cash with which they'd like to buy some companies. And while T-Online is the biggest online provider of Europe it is largely unknown outside of Europe, thus buying AOL would make sense to some people because T-Online likes to expand and conquer markets outside of Europe.

Re:Already denied...

[pmz]

"expand and conquer"

Those Germans really need a new business model.

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!

Re:Not surprising...

[gfxguy]

Yeah, but that's ALL they did... it was a name change only, it's not like the company split.

As an employee, I wish they would - AOL consumed Time Warner because they had artificially high stock prices and decided it was time for something with real value. They've been dragging us down ever since.

Don't get me wrong - the press is really hard on AOL. Yes, customers are leaving, but they still have the most customers and charge the highest price. They are still making tons of cash, they're just making less and less of it.

While I wish the company would split, I don't see how another ISP could buy out the largest ISP in the world. Wishful thinking.

Full disclosure: I don't read German, I didn't read the article, so maybe I'm missing something.

The Germans

[pubjames]

Consider - worlds largest post company - Deutsche Post. The airline that carries the most passengers - Lufthansa. The Germans own a good many of the biggest companies in the auto industry. And Deutsche Telecom (which I believe includes T-Online) is one of the world's largest telecomms.

I think people fail to realise how powerful the German business sector is. If Germany was the same size of the USA, I'm sure it would be the top dog at the moment, not the USA. And now that the European European Union is creating the biggest single global market, Germany should be able to increase it's economy even further as it is at the heart of Europe.

Re:The Germans

[mseeger]

Hi,

One problem with these figures is the exchange rate between Euro and the US$. 18 months ago, when one Euro was 0.86 US$, your figures were "correct".

Nowadays one Euro is woth about 1.15 US$. Suddenly the GDP measured in US$ per capita jumped up nearly 30%. So did germany close the gap while being in recession? No!

Another problem about the GDP is that the US (AFAIK) gives it an uplift due to the quality increase. This isn't done in Europe.

Regards, Martin

P.S. Let's not play "my ecconomy is bigger than yours". For my part, there are a lot of things, i think the US is doing better. But there are a lot of things too, i consider worse.

Re:The Germans

[uradu]

True, but then again the British national hobby IS to put down the Germans at every opportunity. If you read The Economist regularly, when reporting on the German economy, if they left out the name of the country you'd get the impression they're talking about some inconsequential two-bit Third World country. Don't get me wrong, no one is harder on themselves than the Germans (just read Der Spiegel and you want to slash your wrists over all the doom and gloom), but it's kind of ironic that the ones pointing their fingers the most are those with their own fair share of problems.

So Britain went for the quick fix short term gains by throwing pretty much their entire social net out the window in the image of their masters across the pond. The Germans OTOH in their typical stubbornness and reluctance to change cling on to their economic model from the '80s, leading to respective blips and dips in the growth charts. Still, they're aware that change is required. I'd say wait another ten years before gloating. The '90s are hardly a solid economic barometer, lots of wanky business went on there (ahem, AOL?!). Besides, sooner or later the outrageous British defence spending is going to come home to roost. I'd say in the not-too-distant future "Operation Freedom" will show up as a big fat dip in the British bottom line, and some politicians will get a fair spanking.

Re:The Germans

[torpor]

I just moved to Germany after a 15-year stint in Southern California.

All I can say is this:

German business is a blatant economic force to be reckoned with, if you're an American business. Germans are hot on your heels in pretty much every sector, and then some...

It is only after actually living here for a while that I've come to sense a value in the characterization of Germans by Americans.

The West is a Wilde place sometimes ...

Please release IM, let IM go...

[markxsd]

Surely 80% of the Instant Messaging market is the only asset AOL have that's worth anything to anyone?? Apart from that, what else is there? Millions of Joe 6 DDoS drones... Netscape seems to have been abandoned, it's worth nothing now, if it was ever worth anything in the first place...

If this is more than an American Dream, let's hope that an outcome will be that AOL will loosen their grip on the IM market. The closed model they've been trying to enforce has been holding back a world of possibilities for Jabber and IM client development.

english translation

[ponxx]

by yours truly... in a rush so don't complain if it's not 100% accurate (apologies for the dodgy english as well):

"American Dream"

T-online has lots of money and high ambitions, one option is the take-over of AOL

For years it was a duel that electrified the internet public. Deutsche Telekom with T-online vs. the conqueror from the US: AOL.

The opponents used all means to fight for markets in europe, including law-suits, dumping prices and advertising campaigns. A Particular twist was added when the (german) media company Bertelsman headed by Thomas Middelhoff, worked together with the Americans.

Today, all has changed. Since Spring 2000 Bertelsmann is not involved with AOL anymore and Middelhoff is a partner with Investcorp in London.

He searches for investment opportunities in the entire world and has particularly good contacts to the US, where he is on the board of the NYT. From the deals of the 90s he still knows many people at Time Warner, who euphorically bought AOL 4 years ago but is now unhappy with the online-business.

Time Warner already dropped AOL from the name and are apparently thinking of seeling large parts of the company. The most likely candidate is according to sources of the SZ the T-online AG who has been striving for international expansion for a while, but not achieved its aims in this area.

One idea is for the germans to hold 80% of AOL shares while 30% stay with Time Warner, a cooperation that would change the media-landscape. It would happen due to the deal-making of Middelhoff.

It is the old Bertelsmann Boss and now Investment banker who has aided the talks between T-online and Time-Warner. Information from T-online sources suggest that a meeting between TW boss Richard PArsons and T-online Boss Thomas Holtrop has already occured.

The suggested price-tag is ~1 Bn Dollars. That's a long way away from the former astronomical valuations of the company once promoted by Middelhoff friend Steve Case.

At it's maximum AOL bought Time Warner for 112 Bn Dollar. Recently AOL lost customers, currently there are about 25 Million.

It woudl be easy for Holtorp and Col to pay for the deal. T-online still has 4 Bn Euros. This capital needs a targe so that publicly traded T-online corp can achieve its ambitious growth targets.

Middelhoff was not available for comment. A t-online spokes-person didn't want to commen on the rumours: "Every quarter we're asked "What are you doing with your money?"

Fundamentally there are two major parts of strategy. One is inorganic growth, by purchases and by waiting on consolidation of the market,.

A deal with AOL would have the particular advantage that T-online would get a foot-hold in the american market. Co-operations with sister-firm T-mobile are important as the companies work together on "T-Zones" where T-online supplise contents, which could be important for the US investments of T-mobile.

The Project AOL is top secret. A final decision has not been made. There are risks, in particular in terms of regulators. In Germany AOL never made major inroads. It is likely that after a merger AOL germany would disappear.

On Tuesday T-online has declared a quarterly profit for the first time. T-online now has 12.9 Mn customers, 9% more than last year. 4/5 of these live in Germany, so it's time for a jump. Yes, t-online is on the look-out says Holtrop, and it would not be years until he has something to announce...

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?

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

[Shakrai]

I don't mean to pick on you, but when they ask what you're running, humor them and say "Windows XP".

It's the principal of having to jump though hoops to report an outage on a commercial-grade account that my company pays several hundred dollars a month for. I do feel bad for the Level 1 techs themselves (I used to be one), but not the company that hires them.

I had a similar problem with a Verizon ISDN circuit once. My router (Cisco 776) was reporting an error of "Error 3 - no Route" every time it tried to dial. The idiot that I spoke to told me "We'll send someone out to test the line, but if there aren't any problems, we are going to charge you".

They dispatched someone who did loopback tests and pronounced the line clean and functional. I told them I would try a spare router (another 776) the next day and see if it worked or not -- I wasn't discounting that it could be our equipment, even though I doubted it. No shock, the spare router had the same error message.

They then proceeded to tell me it was my configuration and they didn't support my router (they'd be too happy to support it for $75/hr). I told them this was bullshit -- said configuration had worked fine for years, and wasn't changed prior to the router not working.

This went back and fourth for the next two days (at one point they even claimed that they LOST my ticket and all the notes attached to it) before (after yelling at nearly every person I talked to -- every shread of patience I had was gone at this point) I got a co tech on the line who worked with me on solving the problem (she had me initiating ISDN calls to various numbers while she traced them). Turns out, somebody changed the reroot order in one of their tadem switches (? that means nothing to me, but I'm not a telco weenie) and that caused the calls to disappear into the ether. Why they didn't make this connection earlier is beyond me. If one of my setups stops working the first thing I do is look at anything that has been changed over the last couple of days....

By this point it had been down for 72 hours. I had three different tickets open on this issue before I finally got the knowledgeable CO Tech on the phone. She was helpful and actually knew what she was talking about. Every other idiot told me the problem was on "my end", accused me of "not knowing how to configure your own equipment", (my retort to that being "I guess Cisco's CCNP certification is overrated then"), and "We'll fix it, but it'll cost $75/hr." Three weeks after this problem was solved we received an invoice for the initial visit that did not solve or even diagnosis the problem. Needless to say, we did not pay said invoice...

It's even more amusing to me that the little Mom & Pop ISP I worked for could go three years without a major outage (the outage that did occur was due to a car hitting a telephone pole outside of our building -- beyond our control) yet major national ISPs with (for all intents and purposes) infinite resources can't manage the same feat, even for their commercial customers. The situation has stabilized somewhat now, but initially the DSL account in question would go down at least once every two weeks for half an hour or so. And that doesn't count the little 30 second "hiccups" that occurred from time to time.

I did eventually speak with the manager of the tech support and got a satisfactory answer out of him -- too few techs employed for the number of calls, company refusing to give out another contact number for non-tech support problems, stressed out customers blaming his people, etc etc. We had quite the mutual rant session for awhile.

Bottom line: I understand outages occur and they are beyond the control of the avg guy at tech support. Just don't read to me from your sheet about router lights and operating systems when you have a known outage on your screen and an estimated time of repair for said outage. If you do, I'm going to rip you a new one, and rip your supervisor a

Re:Hello?

[ahillen]

f I remember correctly, T-Online is owned by Deutsche Telekom

Right. ;)

While T-Online is profitable, Deutsche Telekom is not...

Wrong. Deutsche Telekom [which has the 4 divisions T-Online (Internet), T-Mobile (cell phone service), T-Com (fixed line service, basically the German fixed line network), and T-Systems (something like extended IT services)] is quite profitable right now. They still have huge amount of depths though from the times they purchased expensive 3G UMTS licenses and bought Voicestream for a huge load of money. But they are strongly reducing that depths, and the company is profitable. Actually, the just released their financial statement for the first 9 months of this year today (www.telekom3.de/en-p/inve/2-bu/cont/2003/thir/031 113-report-two-ar.html)

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

The Register got the story (short)....

[DerOle]

.. in English. See it here

D.Telekom CEO denies T-Online in talks on AOL

[saddino]

So it appears we have an official denial now (as reported by Forbes this morning).

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.

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?)