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AOL to Raise Dialup Prices
United Bimmer writes "America Online has announced that it's going to raise the price on dialup users in an attempt to encourage them to upgrade to broadband. The new rates will near $26 a month, already drastically higher than the market norm for dialup access. This will bring the dialup prices to almost the exact same per month as broadband depending on your plan. However through this, they do still offer an unadvertised lower price for those who can't get or don't want broadband can request lower-priced plans, including an unadvertised offering of about $18 with a one-year commitment."
You've Got Inflation!
I wasn't aware that AOL by itself provides broadband access. My only options appear to be DSL from the phone company or cable internet from the cable company.
Less AOL users and more boadband users.. how could it get any better?
So now I can get dial-up for the same low price as broadband? Wait...
Paul: If you're reading this, pick your shoes up out of the hallway. I keep tripping over them. Slob.
The concept of AOL alone was enough to get me to upgrade.
Honesty may be the best policy, but by process of elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.
1. Give crappy dial-up service
2. Give crappy broadband service
3. Increase the price of your crappy dial-up service
4. Profit!!!! Or go out of business.
Another failed attempt to fill in step 3.
Tluin natha Linux xxizzuss uriu olt bwael mon'tun.
Raising the dialup rates for people by such a huge margin is absolutely asinine, honestly. Then think about the $18/month they would charge for people who cannot get broadband internet is at least 50% a month more expensive than other dial-up providers.
Who in their right mind would even consider paying for AOL dial-up?!
Let's see... 1. Drive away current users with high dial up prices 2. Watch them sign up with other competitive broadband providers 3. ...
4. Profit?
This will certainly chase away many of their current customers. I am unable to get DSL or Cable and Sattelite is way too expensive. If dialup prices are raised by AOL, I'm sure that many will switch to a less expensive ISP.
When I upgrade to broadband, and then cancel my service, will I continue to get billed for it anyway at the braodband rate or at the dial-up rate?
In the USA, we like stuff watered down, like beer, television, and freedom.
As if the AOL customer service was reason enough to avoid it, now they add a whole new insult. Cell phone like plan gouging and hidden pricing with contractual commitments. Of course, on the upside, this will make people switch to a new provider via economic pressure. You have to love natural selection in progress.
Wouldn't it be great if other companies did this?
Golf courses could make the hole smaller to encourage more people to buy Tiger Woods video games.
McDonalds could increase the amount of ice in drinks to make people buy bigger drinks.
Motion Picture creators could degrade the quality of videos to make people move to a new format.
Nike could make their shoes less comfortable and then sell replacement linings.
Is this funny or insightful?
It's probably both.
I don't get it.
Time to add AOL to the list of great moments in pricing failures.
my blog
Now there will be more NetZero commercials with Dennis Miller. "Why pay $26 for AOL when you can get NetZero for less than $10?" Great comedian/writer turned NetZero ad-boy.
People still use dial-up!?
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
To be honest, I saw this coming. Not just at AOL, but it is very forseeable that dial-up prices will only go up, and broadband prices will go down, or it will get faster. Just think about it, doesnt dial-up require a dedicated connection? Just like making a phone call? Where adding additional users to a broadband system just eats up more bandwidth from the large and growing pool. AOL might be jumping the gun and doing it before dial-up costs actually rise, but as the telcos lose their traditional phone customers to VoIP, a normal phone line will just get more and more expensive.
Heh. Dial-up modems use broadband signalling. Compare with ethernet, for example. Sigh.
-b
myselfmusic
So you will need a one year plan and buy a DSL modem.
Which is sad, really.
A good case for my point would be Dish Network. As they've started updating their systems for HD, they have given current users free updates for satellite dishes. Without this option, the users could easily re-evaluate their options and check out DirecTV. When Dish finally has a complete HD solution to all their customers, they could very well up the cost of their service and customers would have to accept the fact that they can't afford the initial cost of a new satellite service. Dish Network understands that you have to upgrade some options for free or you lose a permanent revenue source.
Is it me or is this a strangle place for this advertisement, err I mean article. I'm thinking that the target audience for this post is all the slashdotter's who are forced to support family members and friends that use AOL dialup. I'm sure glad I'm clued into the $18/mo. plan :)
Actually, I got dear old Dad off of dialup and onto the low-end broadband years ago, but it makes support much easier now that I can share his screen.
Out of curiousity, did any of those ISP's back in the mid 90's that offered lifetime internet access for one large initial fee survive the dotcom era?
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
Thats just criminal. AOL is no longer the premiere Content Provider. They will Join Qlink in the near future. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QLink
Time Warner is now bundling AOL service with its High Speed service (to raise subscription rate for stock holders?) Everyone knows that you can get dial up as low as $9/month. Not to sound like a broken record, but BroadBand users tend to stear away from AOL - Cutting their own throat.
-- I Dont Deserve A Sig I Have Bad Karma
I have a confession to make; I once tried the AOL free trial. The free trial wasn't woth the cost!
Anything that pushes their customers to other ISPs is a good thing in my book. Although most will no doubt be pushed to the major providers, some will actually go with local companies and I think one of the best ways to keep customer hostile policies like "tiered internet", etc is to keep as many people as possible getting access through small companies and independents instead of large isps who have sociopathic beancounters that are given drugs to find new ways of screwing us, pissing us off and making an additional 12 cents a month for it. After all, those policies work best when there are no alternatives.
Then again, AOL has pretty awesome retention, years ago I used their service for free for well over a year by calling in every month and threatening to cancel. I suppose that may of have changed though.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
"...Chairman Steve Case confidently stated that this was as much a coup as their getting AOL CDs put around the necks of the Winter Olympic medalists, and he wanted to know if you were done with that sandwich."
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
I would bet that this is part of a larger plan, so people would be more willing to buy and download from the Net movies, music, games, etc. It is not just a push for high speed access, since TimeWarner has fingers into all kinds of media and entertainment .
Sounds like End of Line (EOL).
Sure, the modulation is different, but it's still just a signal traveling over copper wire.
So is cable for that matter.
All kidding aside, AOL completly relies on the fact that their customer doesn't know a thing about how computers or the internet actualy work. Just look at their commercials: (talking about their spyblocker or some such) "Because with high speed internet, the intruders come at you faster!" I don't even know where to begin with that statement. But the AOL users just nod knowingly and install more bloatware.
If forums teach us anything, it is that logic and critical thinking should be required courses in the public schools.
Everyone I know has gigapop Internet. Some of the local peons only have cable modem or DSL, but they're in the minority.
Is this some kind of red state thing like having landline phones like in the Dark Ages?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I have a confession to make; I once tried the AOL free trial. The free trial wasn't woth the cost!
...
I find that it's hard to get the 1024 hours of free online time. After about the third day of mainlining caffeine, you start seeing things, and it's not your monitor reacting to the magnetic calendars you keep putting on it
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
AOL is actually being pretty crafty about this.
They know that there's a huge number of subscribers that are scared shitless about leaving the warm embrace of AOL, and they just won't leave. They figure that some folks will upgrade to AOL broadband, and AOL makes more money on this folks. Others will pay double, even triple for phone dial-up. Just to not lose that wonderful interface. They'll even suffer pain, case in point:
I'm seeing this girl that's just scared to death of computers. AOL auto updated to the new version, and just totally screwed her computer in the process. This is not enough to get her to quit AOL. I fix her computer, requiring a complete OS reinstall, and set it to an older less toxic version... her stupid brother pops in an AOL 9.0 CD to upgrade it. It upgrades to 9.0, and then the cheap ass CD shatters from the high rotation rate of her 56x CD-ROM drive immediately post-install - totally destroys it. Then the software again does a number on her computer... and she still will not quit AOL.
Hell, AOL is now learning what drug dealers have know for a while, and are going to make bucks on it.
- Alienating users who simply can't afford broadband
- Alienating users located in places where broadband just can't reach them
But then again, considering that CompUSA employees have loads of trouble getting people to sign up for AOL, that goes far to say just how inferior AOL is and how people using it deserve to pay for their stupidity. Looks like AOL is asking for an even smaller subscription base (or maybe even a death wish)...It's just a shift to more of an ad-based revenue stream.
That makes this another fine example of the customer not being the real customer. This is one of the reasons that I hate the word "consumer." It very accurately describes one's real relationship to companies that like to use it.
You are not the one that's always right. You are just the one that consumes the content, and you are a replaceable cog. If we can milk you for money too, then so much the better.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Fast-Food Ice Dirtier Than Toilet Water
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/print?id=1641825
There are times when it makes sense to stay cheap & simple. For instance, many people who live in the countryside find dialup to be the only affordable option - they can't get cable or DSL broadband, and satellite is an expensive proposition for casual users. And lets not forget that people like my mom don't need rip-snorting broadband to check e-mail once a week. And in other news, bus drivers have announced a raise in fares to encourage people to buy cars. ;)
Enough said...
Why would they want to drive people away from dialup access? Dialup is their bread and butter, if they encourage people to dump dialup and move to broadband they will do just that, but I won't count on them keeping AOL when they do get broadband.
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.
Hmmm...let me see....I have a 3Mbit DSL connection giving me downloads at over 300 kb/sec. Err....yep, that's slow. Jeez, there's hardly any difference between this and the 3kb/sec speed I got with dial-up. You're right - let me cancel straight away - I'm being duped.
Dude - get this into your techno-head: the difference between dial-up and DSL can be huge to people interested in using the Internet. The physical reality, or layer, is irrelevent to the majority of these people. They got care a rat's ass about the FCC and spectrum usage.
"I dont think that DSL should even be considered as broadband". In your universe it probably isn't.
Am I understanding this correctly? The AOL broadband is almost %50 cheaper than my current cable modem connection? Call me a noob, but....A/S/L??
What, there are actually people on dialup ? Paying for it ???? 26$ ????? Any of the three would get you in a museum in Western Europe
but as the telcos lose their traditional phone customers to VoIP, a normal phone line will just get more and more expensive.
Last time I looked, it was telcos owning the wire to your, and millions of other homes.
Even if telcos have to invent reasons for you to keep your phone wires (and they will) they most certainly will not go quietly into the night.
As someone that moonlights tech support for home users I had an especially bad experience in one home with two computers on AOL dsl. They called me because one machine was slow for a while then stopped getting on the Internet. After a wipe and reinstall the PC refused to get on AOL. Tech support hung up on me. I ended up using a miserable hack to get it all to work.
On the other end of the spectrum is my Dad who likes AOL(!) Thank god for penggy. I'm sure there are very many users like my Dad who find AOL quite satisfactory.
What I'd love to know:
Are the infrastructure costs of dialup higher than DSL for an ISP? I don't see the wisdom of driving everyone onto broadband.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
But then again, cable and dsl are completely and totally different kinds of signals on copper wire.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
1. Install AOL and use the free trial.
2. Call up and tell them you want to leave.
3. Get a few more months.
4. Goto 2.
Perhaps he meant "baudband". ;)
A company is going to deliberately overcharge their customers in an attempt to get them to stop using the product.
Read that again.
Perhaps people will begin to understand why:
1. Retail stores deliberately mistreat their customers by having one cashier and 57 "loss prevention" employees.
2. Disney fires 4000 people between nine-figure movie releases, then fires their entire animation division
3. General Motors fires 30,000 people because "nobody is buying cars" We hear the news on the radio in a traffic jam that can be seen from orbit.
4. Half of working-age adults are not employed in full-time permanent jobs.
5. Half of the population is functionally illiterate.
Go back and read about the company that is deliberately overpricing their product to make customers leave.
Go ahead.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Dude? Dude!
I said "the difference is not insignificant, however..."
100Mbit/Sec over cable vs 3Mbit over DSL? Not to mention the number of people who can get maximum speeds is inversely proportional to the distance from the telco office, which means the vast majority of customers will not experience the theoretical maximum. Twisted pair will never be as effective or efficient a medium as coax. If you don't understand that, we can talk again when you do.
"I dont think that DSL should even be considered as broadband". In your universe it probably isn't.
That doesn't even make sense. The definition of "fast" changes over time. I'm arguing that a couple of Mbits (or generally much less) shouldn't be the current definition of "fast," and it's not, in many places. In my world, 56k probably isn't fast either, even though it blows 300bps out of the water. What a crazy world I live in.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Oh, of course! Layoffs!
More foreclosures and bankruptcies. More pain. More suffering. More destroyed neighborhoods. More unemployment and reposessions. More wasted education. GET MORE SKILLS! It's the EMPLOYEE'S FAULT!
And a big bump for the stock price. Cracked lobster with a side of tall dollars. Step up to the buffet and pass the croutons.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
You'd be surprised by the amount of people who won't leave AOL no matter what - even with the extra cost. My mother in-law refuses, because either she actually uses the 'extra' services or doesn't believe the world outside of AOL offers any benefits.
I only need the Preview button when I haven't used the Preview button.
My mother and father-in-law both use AOL. Neither of them can stand open Internet connectivity because it is different, transparent, and doesn't have the lovely ultra-over-crowded Welcome screen. This is not derision, it is a factual observation.
When my father-in-law moved, he purchased DSL through the local phone company. He loves the speed. We tried to wean him off AOL, but have been unsuccessful. Quoth he, "Web mail is terrible, and Thunderbird is horrible!" [read:it doesn't have my familiar-of-7-years filing cabinet, and I have to actually start an application after he's "started" the internet.] "I don't 'see' the Internet!" [read: He feels warm and comfortable with the AOL main window as the portal, and using all these 'loose' applications gives him no warm fuzzies.]
It isn't that he's not smart (he's got multiple Dr. degrees), it isn't that he doesn't understand... it is how he feels that matters. This is the nut of the AOL user base.
None of my tech-enabled friends uses (or would consider) AOL - I think AOL has become a cultural ubiquity.
A Passionate Independent Musician
I can't believe you've been peeking at my IQ scores. Stalker.
You are aware that DSL is, on average, 50% slower than cable right? Citing the maximum for a very limited coverage area is irrelevant to the general discussion. Of course you are.. that's why you posted AC.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
That's exactly the idea. AOL wants out of the dial-up business.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
48CAD/mo (like 10 cents US) More like US$41.80 - Give the dollar some credit man
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
Second... my parents (mid 50's aged) used to be stuck with a high cost ISP through a deal they got at work. When their contract expired, they switched to your average nation $10 / month dialup ISP (Qwest has decided their neighborhood doesn't warrant DSL, although they live in a suburb and cable is readily available, but overpriced for their budget).
This new ISP, unlike the old expensive one, is awful. Heaven help you if you want to send UDP traffic because it gets dropped, constantly (and on dialup, that is in fact the end of the world). Disconnections every 20 minutes, minimum. Plus, a real PITA interface with 'pop-up' blockers and 'virus scanners' that take down the web connection with frightening frequency while in fact neither blocking popups nor catching viruses and spyware. I know because, as most of you, I get the call to fix it when it is broken, and I *used* to be able to play games like Starcraft (pure UDP) with my little brother, back in the day...
This isn't just a complaint post, though. There's a market hiding in there. Specifically, I would consider recommending an ISP who charged more money in exchange for services that were actually valuable. Like ISP to backbone latency guarantees, or never a dropped packet on their network (which requires quite a bit of expensive redundant hardware and a willingness to not sell all available bandwidth), or any of a host of other non-intrusive services. You want to scan for viruses? Scan the packets before they get to me. A popup blocker? I use a *real* webrowser, I don't need it. Your ridiculous dialer app that wraps internet explorer? Just give me a phone number and an 8 line instruction page for setting up a modem shortcut.
For the right price, it *must* be possible to actually provide a true, clean, non-intrusive high quality connection at the advertised speed. Is that AOL? Probably not. But it if existed, it would be worth considering, even at $26 for dialup. The older I get, the more I am interested in exchanging my money for quality goods and services. I care about price, but I care more about what I'm getting than how much I'm getting it for. I am willing to pay more to avoid having MSN, AOL, Earthlink or any other such ISP manage my broadband connection, from experience with each of those.
Is there such a thing as a 'luxury' ISP? Maybe there should be.
In Soviet Russia, us are belong to all your base.
in an attempt to encourage them to upgrade to broadband. OK so driving up dail-up prices > lowering existing broadband prices? You would think the latter would bring more profit... Then again, let AOL make all the stupid decisions they want... Not like I'm trying to save them from a horrible death.
Actually, AOL will offer their service for next to nothing. Just call in and ask to cancel. They will offer like $5 a month if you choose to stay on -- without any commitment or anything. Of course, why anyone would want to use AOL is beyond me.
AOL is an Evil Empire. Simple as that. They disgust me.
I'm not sure what exactly your point is... yes, DSL is over the same line as another service, but so is cable for that matter, isn't it? And it most definitely still qualifies as broadband; at least in my area, the average DSL plan is better than 70 times faster than standard dial-up. Which, oddly enough, is roughly equal in speed to the cable plans around here.
Superior? I'm lucky enough to have a cable line, which I send through my router/firewall, and then of course have Windows's built-in firewall on (I'm sure it sucks, but hell, even you are probly using it), and I run Avast 4 (Home edition is free to, well, home users), Spybot, and Microsoft Anti-spyware (I know they suck, and they're gonna shaft the anti-spyware "beta" once they re-release it as "Windows Defender" with OneCare (they strong armed the "Defender" name offa another product, but thats another story))
You know why I use that stuff? cus it works AND its free (as in free beer) - and you know what else? I dont get hit with jack shit. For all the claims AOL makes about broadband being *more* dangerous /* chuckles to self - what a bunch of nut jobs */ I find their claims a bunch of bullshit, but thats just me anyway - if you seriously meant what you said "AOL has a better security suite", you have 2.5 choices
1.A) Go right on ahead and let em keep screwing you in the ass
1.B) Get yourself into a mental ward
2) Even if you stick with dial-up, switch to some other ISP
Like the parent poster?
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Things have changed. Although I was happy with my local ISP, SBC DSL is now cheaper (I live in a rural area where a lot of those $10 deals aren't available). Only child still at home is now in college, and she needs better access. We both do some online gaming. I switched to DSL without any regret except the loss of a locally maintained Usenet spool.
Now that I have a nice wireless network set up at home, I have found an added fringe benefit; backup network access through my neighbors who don't share my ideas about security.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Microsoft could sell you insecure software, then sell you a separate product to secure it.
*COUGH*ONECARE*COUGH*
grep -iw skynet
AOL's customers are mostly technically illiterate morans who need to get a brain, and old people who had a computer pushed on them by their children or grandchildren. Some of them even fell for the 2 free months with no commitment promotion only to be driven insane.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
Pfft, nerds don't use AOL!
With the cooperation of someone in-town who has broadband (or can get it), you could rig something like this. I had been considering something like this before I decided to move. A bunch of work, and a bit of equipment, but I'm sure with your broadcast engineering skills it wouldn't be a problem. There were teenagers that won this contest a couple years ago at 55 miles, with satalite dishes that they obtaind for free from neighborhood homes that didn't use them anymore. Fun stuff.
No conformist ever made history.
The sad thing is that many many people will keep their AOL accounts, despite the price increase, since they don't like the idea of changing their email address. It is a huge hassle to change your email address with all the various e-tailers, login-only sites, etc. and no matter how careful you are, there will be a few you forget. I lost several shareware registrations and my old 4-digit Slashdot account this way years ago when a university account expired on me, oh well. And then the idea that friends/relatives will try to email your old address and not get you- ugh, the horror! So there is a huge amount of inertia, particularly amoung people who've had only one email address their whole life (for example, many AOLers.) And AOL is milking this inertia. People aren't going to switch to another ISP, which may well raise their rates in a while, if the hassle of dealing with a new email address is high.
Remember about seven years back when prices for long distance service crashed? Everyone, AT&T included, started offering all kinds of new plans that saved people 50-90% on their bills. But what didn't drop for years was the standard rates that Grandma still payed because she never called an 800 number. It's deja vu all over again.
September is about to end?
I'd just like to say, I am an AOL user. and I have never paid for it, for over 3 years now. I just call and cancel every 3 months and they keep giving me 3 months free (on average). It's a little annoying to have to call, but I love their easy to use automated answering system (yeah right). I don't use any of their services though, I stick to the dialer. I want broadband badly but I'm too cheap. I'll give in someday, or maybe I'll just wait for that free Google wifi project ;)
Website Designed by...
I'm sorry, but you have GOT to be kidding me.
Sorry, I thought my point was clear in the context of the article:
If anything, DSL should be lowered to dialup costs; dialup costs shouldn't be raised to DSL levels. DSL is essentially the same service over the same network as dialup. It's what dialup would be if FCC regs didn't prohibit traditional modems from operating at DSL frequencies. It doesn't cost more to connect at 56Kbps than it does at 33.3Kbps, or 28.8Kbps, and often dialup users don't connect at full speed anyway; it shouldn't cost more for DSL, especially now that it's an established technology. I can accept that there are installation charges, because some additional work is nessecary for each line, but beyond that the differences are skin deep.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Leaving AOL is like trying to get out of the mafia. Last month I called to end my 2 year old "AOL For Broadband" service. It took almost a half hour to get through the automated menus and waiting periods. Then the woman who answered my call refused to take my request to drop service at face value. I was grilled extensively about my reasons for wanting to drop the service.
King Kong with bloomers kept suggesting "alternatives" to my problems such as new browsing habits, software etc. I quite forcefully told her I didn't want "solutions" and wanted to drop the service. She then proceeded to give me instructions about some browser she said I had to download in order to drop service.
At that point I told her to drop my service "now" or I was going to contact the State Attorney Generals office. She finally ended my service then
Latter I checked up and found the New York State Attorney Generals Office had already sanctioned AOL in the recent past for just the same practices I went through.
AOL is sleazy and I wouldn't doubt they raise their prices knowing a lot of present members still can't get broadband for whatever reason. Of members who decide to drop the know they will strong-arm a certain percentage away from liberty. They have probably costed out the fines for such behavior verses the gains. No doubt they will encourage some to bump up to their broadband, and AOL-Dial will get even more ghetto-fabulous content to charm its hordes.
BOTH of course
Can someone clue me in on where I can get that? I live in a big metro area (Denver) and I'm paying comcast $45 a month for cable internet, and thats with a deduction for owning my own cable modem and another for bundling with their Cable TV service.
I'm not saying AOL is a good value or anything for dialup, but in my experience thats a pretty lowball estimate for "exact same per month as broadband".
What can possibly be on AOL that isn't also already on the net - I mean is there some magic packaging they wrap around the rest of the content on the planet that makes it worth putting up with a non-standard browser and now this?
So you have their $26 monthly and then they ask you to slap on either a monthly $17 or $22 DSL account to get connected.
So I'm still at $48 per month to get to 3 meg and tied to their app.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
It's all about people being scared of change. They are terrified of having to learn anything and the idea of having *gasp* seperate email and web browser programs scares the shit out of them. "But then how will people know how to email me?". The majority of them even when they go cable/dsl keep their dam AOL even though I implore them not to. Most AOL users I know don't even use the services AOL offers. It just makes it easy to have one single icon to click to reach "the Internet". I had hoped those days would be gone by now and that AOL would be a distant memory, but I don't see that happening anytime soon no matter how much they charge. I think we are going to have to wait for an entire generation to die before we see any change.
AOL could charge $39 a month for dialup and still keep 75%+ of their userbase.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
I never said it was a great design, and I'm not going to defend it, because I have no relation to it.
I present it only for the information, mainly that an unamplified 802.11b link can be solidly established for point-to-point connections over very useful distances with little additional equipment cost, and no licensing concerns due to its' unamplified status.
No conformist ever made history.
Looks like someone else is an "illiterate moran."
AOL's customers aren't capable of comprehending such a thing, that is why they are still AOL users.
All kidding aside, AOL completly relies on the fact that their customer doesn't know a thing about how computers or the internet actualy work.
Their customers will get more educated as they deal with their new tech support contacts. When they have issues with signing onto AOL, AOL will do some simple checks from their side and then refer/transfer the customers to the real support people (the DSL support agents for the RBOC they partnered with). The first thing a decent broadband support agent will do when dealing with someone who can't sign onto AOL is have them try without AOL (using IE, Safari) and at some point the customer will realize they can get on the internet just fine without AOL and there really is no reason they have to keep using it (and paying for the piggy-back AOL access).
This plan is going to backfire for AOL in the end. They are selling out their dialup business to broadband partnerships. The first rule of keeping customers is to have direct control to their connetion. AOL loses this and people will see AOL subscriptions aren't worth the money when they aren't needed to actually connect. Add to this the AOL screename/email account they're allowed to keep now and AOL has lost another tool for retention (email address lockin).
But then maybe AOL's plan is to simply become a subscripion entertainment porthole (a la Yahoo Radio) in the end.
Many just may get pissed off and go with other providers, such as Earthlink. It will be a good time for Earthlink to market to ex-AOL'ers.
Table-ized A.I.
I probably use the account once every three or four months at the most, and I even then I access the AOL network through my own separate broadband ISP account. The only time in the past dozen years I've used it for non-testing for any period of time is when the three hurricanes came through central Florida and I was without my broadband connection for a few days.
AOL isn't sparing anyone from the price increase. I *was* paying their obscure $4/mo+hourly plan which I considered fair. But, I received the following e-mail from them the other day:
As you can read in the letter, they're basically justifying raising my monthly fee for items of their service that I never or rarely use or benefit from: reliable Internet service, security features, exclusive content, member service and support.
And now they'll be getting $83/year (nearly all of which is pure profit) from me -- a developer trying to support users of their crappy service. I realize it's not a lot, but that doesn't make it feel like less of a ripoff.
Way to go AOL. You're making it really easy to just give up on you completely.
In Norway they have free dialup internet! The company was called freesurf.no (or something). I don't know if they are still around; their website doesn't seem to work. The only thing you pay for is the phone call. There were no ads or bloatware to install. Oddly enough my house had ISDN, but I couldn't afford a modem for it (and I didn't know what I would need (like an ISP (and if there even is one (and I probably wouldn't have been able to find one easily(I don't speak Norwegian))))(and there was a digital --> analog converter so all the phones except one would be "normal", so I would have had to add a wire (but I couldn't because it was a rented house (and the landlord didn't like us)))).
Hell, if it's legal either way, I can bet the next large commercial wave is going to be of other dial-up startups, with FAR better (not to mention smaller and simpler) software to run instead of AOL, at half the price, unlimited, on a month-to-month basis. Twenty-six dollars on a month-to-month basis? Are you joking?
Let the marketing war begin.
BTW, how the hell was I rated 'Overrated' when I had no other moderation done to me to begin with? Which mod is smoking the pipe, tonight, hrm?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I'm really confused what the real story is.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
i didnt know people even used AOL dialup anymore.
Last year during a bit of a financial low point I tried AOL for a month. On canceling, aside from the expected extra time added to my trial, they also offered to price match my local ISP at $15, no strings mentioned. Guess that they raised the lower price as well as the suckers' price.
Raising the price (tax) to try to influence people's behavior? I guess if it works for the government it works for AOL. Looking at it, it is obviously a smart business move. Broadband customers are cheaper since that decreases the need for phone lines. And people that stay on dialup mostly likely don't have a broadband option so it doesn't matter how much they are screwed over. They will still pay.
Maybe 'AOL users' is an uncountable substance ...
Every bloody emperor has his hand up history's skirt [Peter Hammill/VdGG]
I've generally kept myself away from AOL which isn't too hard in merry 'ol england, as we have loads of ISPs. well unless the software is on your computer. Damn it doesn't seem to never go no matter how many times you delete it >:O
Anyway my Dial-up is ok, £15 a month (around $20-£30 I'm not too sure of the exchange rate at the mo) and that is I can use it anytime and not get charged anything extra. Now Broadband here is around £17 a month usually. AOL do it for that, so do a lot of ISPs but they only go up to 1Mb for AOL while other companies can go up to 8Mb.
Also what are AOL doing exactly, Thats quite bad, to sell a less quality connection for more then there better service.
God damn AOL, glad I'm not with them.
I live in a place where the only two ways to get internet access are $30/mo dial-up connections or $600 $70/mo satellite DSL connections. It's a good thing other companies aren't following suit at the moment.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
26 USD for dial up :)?! Great, over here broadband providers offer dial-up as a free advertisement for their companies.
But anyways: we've had our telecom do a similar thing to us year or two ago. We have an aging analog phone system and part of it is replaced by digital gradually. At the time they didn't manage to raise the phone prices overall since they were regulated by the government.
So instead they introduced higher prices for the digital lines only instead, because of "investment costs and increased quality service" and so on. So far so good.
Now that most casual folks don't need any of the "great digital service" crap, they shied away from applying to convert their phone lines from analog to digital, which slowed the analog-digital conversion rate last few years.
So the telecom thought, thought, and thought out - "hey we'll raise the prices of the analog lines and make them the same as the digital lines, this will make people switch".
And what happened? A huge amount of people just gave up on their phones - most of them on small villages and rural areas, farms, where they rarely need a phone and can't afford it.
And a lot of them did it.. because they already had (one or more) cellphones.
The rest however, some of them converted, some of them not, but they started making less calls, resulting in significant loss for the telecom last two or so years.
Curious to see how the tactic will turn out on AOL.
What about the commertial that claimed spyware can slow your computer by 800%. I don't know about you, but if you can get a computer to run at -7x its normal speed, I think thats worth patenting.
No smoking sigs indoors.
We have bad phones lines that connect at around 14.4 kb/s. It is my understanding that unless you connect at least at 26 kb/s AOL hangs up, so AOL doesn't even server our rural community. The "urban" areas of the county have Verizon DSL and Insight cable.
This situation is driving most rural net users to use small wifi providers. Farmers and telecommuters can afford that, but most just wait until they get to work to check their email.
The local government is investigating a county wide wireless system, but Verizon is challenging that in the legislature. Verizon's alternative is the "Verizon Broadband Access", which tests out at about 128 kb/s at $60/month.
arg.
Joe
Joe Batt Solid Design
Woot! I got three rejected stories in a week which were then posted. All were posted in my Journal well before they appeared on the front page. What's my prize?
Armor for the Olympic skier Wednesday February 15, @12:43PM Rejected
Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Saturday February 18, @01:47PM
Apple uses poetry to dissuade hackers Friday February 17, @08:30AM Rejected
Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Sunday February 19, @01:02AM
AOL to charge equally for dial-up & broadband Wednesday February 22, @08:16AM Rejected
Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday February 22, @05:18PM
Please note that all three were posted by ScuttleMonkey. Conspiracy? You be the judge.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
dial up is slow as hell anyway, make it cheaper!
Of course, if AOL users had a few more brain cells, they'd have switched to broadband a long time ago. In the NYC area, 768k Verizon DSL costs 37% less than AOL 56k. That means AOL costs about 25 times more per kilobit per second (and you get all their lovely ads and resource-hogging connection software).
You'd have to be a moron to keep using AOL dial-up. Or a typical AOL user. But I repeat myself.
Seriously! Every computer I've bought since the Win95 days has had AOL. I bought a new box last month and IT had a great big AOL icon positioned where you couldn't miss it! In 2006!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
The next generation is becoming more and more technical savvy, hell, my 10 year old kid can reinstall Gentoo with no problems.
When the current generation starts to die(the technically absolute generation), so will AOL.
Cheers, Jared
http://phoenix-network.org
as far as i know AOL doesnt offer their own broadband service. could someone please clarify? the only thing close to broadband that i know of is that they offer their already existed services to go along with your broadband service you have with a real ISP...and all for $10.
Maybe AOL thinks its profits will go up if all its users are on broadband, rather than half broadband half dialup? So does that mean the cost of maintaining a plethora of dial-up lines is more expensive than maintaining broadband? Or do they think that sooner or later those dialup customers are going to switch to broadband, and that damn well better be AOL broadband?
I think it would be fantastic if AOL would stick with their own "internet" and keep their lusers out of our hair. Having a bunch of AOLers on broadband just means there will me a zillion more idiot posts on the Torrent forums.
"WoW uR l33+ gimme woopi goldburg sexxx tape dudududud"
*reaching for the squirt gun*
-Billco, Fnarg.com
AOL??? It amazes me that to this day, in 2006, people still unfortunately require the services of this useless ISP. As far as I'm concerned, AOL is the appendics of the Internet. The Internet training wheels of the 1990's if you will. Their software has, and always will be, nothing but a controlled adware monstrosity used religiously by fruity moms and dads who never knew that right clicking the mouse brought up a fucking menu. And then we all wonder why our president has to go on national television to tell us that countries like India and China are kicking our ass in technology. There are only two things AOL ever did successfully, and that was give computer techs plenty of practice reinstalling Windows and waste a shit load of plastic on advertising CDs that every month offered 2^32 power more free, useless, online minutes than the previous month. Far as I see it, AOL is a sick joke and an embarrassment!
Hmmm. My 10 year old kid can reinstall slackware, but only if I help him set up the partitions.
He still has a bit o' trouble with the CLI.
Dungeon Tactics : Free Open Source SRPG
True enough... it just bugs me when people post buttons like that when clearly, you wouldn't want to be giving anyone credit for that design :)