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Microsoft Soft-Pedals Dialup

Posted by timothy on from the where-the-money-isn't dept.

twitter writes "The NYT reports Bill Gates surrender of dial-up Internet access. 'We stayed in the access business for a while, and then we decided it wasn't for us.' $314 million in advertising yielded $300 million in losses last year." Microsoft's dialup service isn't disappearing, but the company is scaling it back and ending the expensive marketing campaign. This leaves exactly how many big players in the dialup market? Dialup is still the only option in many places.

4 of 278 comments (clear)

  1. decentralization of acess is fine by me. by luge · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If the majority of the country can only get on through mom-and-pop or local dialups, that will make it much harder for Big Content to place chokeholds on how everyone accesses and uses content. If 90% of the country used AOL, MSN, and AT&T, we'd all be screwed- you'd see complete blocks on all music downloads the moment that happened.

    --

    IAAL,BIANLY

    1. Re:decentralization of acess is fine by me. by JPriest · · Score: 5, Insightful
      AOL = $24.95 + a ton of free spam and shitty software.

      Mom @ pop = $9.95, no crappy software required.

      AOL is currently losing customers at a rate in the millions/year. Even broadband is only $7 - $10 more than AOL dialup and you don't have to tie up the phone line.

      --
      Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
    2. Re:decentralization of acess is fine by me. by tepples · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Dial-up can move about four bucks' worth of music downstream an hour.

  2. Who cares? by saberworks · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Who cares about "big players" anyway? Over the years, I tried compuserv, aol, and earthlink, and I always had better luck with local ISPs. They were cheaper, had faster access, and it was easier to get a -real- tech support person on the phone. They also didn't insist on installing their version of a browser and a "remote help agent" which wanted to sit in the systray all the time. The local guys had a configuration cd which simply changed network settings, and that was it. They included a bunch of other useful apps on the cd as well, but nothing I ever installed (since I had it already).

    I would always rather do business with somebody local.