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Microsoft Businesses The Internet

Microsoft Soft-Pedals Dialup 278

Posted by timothy 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.
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Microsoft Soft-Pedals Dialup More

Microsoft Soft-Pedals Dialup

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  • decentralization of acess is fine by me. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by luge ( 4808 ) <slashdot AT tieguy DOT org> on Saturday January 10, 2004 @04:53PM (#7939559) Homepage
    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.
    • How much downloading do you think your mom and pop dialup will be able to support?
    • That seems like some pretty heavy tin-foil hat thinking to me.

      What incentive do these big players have to block music downloads? AOL has an incentive because it's part of a big media company, so it has a good reason to play nice with the other parts of the company. But the other two have no reason at all. AT&T doesn't care about music one way or the other as far as I can tell, and Microsoft is trying to become a big player in the online music arena, so their priorities are exactly the other way. Just b

      • Re:decentralization of acess is fine by me. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by irc.goatse.cx troll ( 593289 ) on Saturday January 10, 2004 @05:51PM (#7939961) Journal
        "What incentive do these big players have to block music downloads?"

        How about legal? regardless of whether its legal or not now, if theres a law making it illegal only the ISP's with N thousands of users will be harassed to follow the law. Mom and pop who wired up their building and bought a T1 are fine. Mom and pop who bought a few T1's and service their urban town are fine. Aol who bought out thousands of mom and pops has to comply.
        • Well, no such laws exist now, and they don't seem too poised to happen. At the moment, the main threat is legal action, where the RIAA demands personal information about subscribers from an ISP. A large ISP will be in a much better position to resist something like that, because of the lawyers they can command, than a small one. Beyond that, the original poster said that big ISPs would have blocks on music downloads "instantly" which is completely foolish. (Yeah, I know, you're responding to me, not him.)

          B
      • I think you're right in your final conclusion, but some of the steps you took are sort of iffy.
        1. Microsoft is interested in selling music, so blocking non-liscenced downloads may look as good to them as it does to the RIAA. They may or may not have the same take as the RIAA does on whether a bit of free sampling hurts sales, but that suggests that they are at best neutral or less agressive about it, just as they haven't agressivly targeted small scale software pirates running individual copies of windows.

    • Well it's about time Microsoft got Internet users to do something active while sitting in front of our computers! So when does the MSN (r) Stationary Bike (tm) - complete with gel-filled Soft Pedals (tm) for barefoot Internet surfing - go on sale? :)

      The word you are looking for is peddles as in "to sell." Soft-peddles = to soft-sell (no Tainted Love here) :)

  • Does this include MSN Broadband? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Limburgher ( 523006 ) on Saturday January 10, 2004 @04:53PM (#7939562) Homepage Journal
    I only ask because it offers some of the same performance and reliability features of dialup: Dropouts, poor speed, and an inability to use all necessary ports. . .

  • NYTimes story requires registration? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Safety Cap ( 253500 ) on Saturday January 10, 2004 @04:55PM (#7939575) Homepage Journal
    Just auto-generate your registration [majcher.com]

  • MSN causes its own downfall (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lithiumfox ( 736891 ) on Saturday January 10, 2004 @04:56PM (#7939587) Homepage
    One of my friends used MSN for 1 year after his 6 month trial period was over because the software that Microsoft put on his computer had exploits. He had free quality dial-up service without even paying a dime. If this one person is able to figure out this exploit, imagine how many other people are doing this. MSN loses money because it can't protect against illicit use.

  • We Don't Need No Stinkin' Big Players (Score:5, Interesting)

    by illuminata ( 668963 ) on Saturday January 10, 2004 @04:57PM (#7939592) Journal
    This leaves exactly how many big players in the dialup market? Dialup is still the only option in many places.

    They're not necessary. Just get a box and a good connection, a little bit of equipment, and some local phone numbers and you're set. The costs to set one up and manage one are rather cheap. It's a smart first business to run in a rural area.
    • Sheesh, don't do that to me. For a moment I thought it was 1997 again... whoopie! let's set up a mom-and-pop dialup ISP!!... then I noticed it's 2004. Like waking up from one of those dreams where you can fly.
      • It's still possible, you just need to find the proper location. Just make sure the area you want to service isn't likely to have cheap broadband and has little competition from other ISPs.

        And, just for the record, I'm not one of those "keep businesses small" zealots either. I'm a fan of free enterprise.

  • AOL... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Raynach ( 713366 ) on Saturday January 10, 2004 @04:57PM (#7939595) Homepage
    Really, how does AOL make any money? They run their connection out of this innately slow program, they charge the price of broadband in some places, and it overall just sucks. I called AOL customer service one time to ask why I was getting a lot of signal interruptions, and the answer I got was "change your access numbers". I had done this many times before, and told the servicewoman so, but, no, it'll work this time, because she told me to do it.

    Is the real reason AOL makes money is because the masses don't know better? That you can check your email, IM people, AND browse the web outside the safety of AOL's little memory hog?

    Sorry about my rant... I just have a lot of angst about these people.

    • Hmmm, high prices, pay as little as possible for tech support personnel, customers too uninformed to use something else, marketing hype.... I think that sums up their business success. Kind of like Microsoft Windows, and Tobacco, isn't it?

    • Re:AOL... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by SurgeonGeneral ( 212572 ) on Saturday January 10, 2004 @05:52PM (#7939966) Journal
      AOL grew out of the BBS era when everyone phoned very small boards that had created their own interface to access the internet. Many people on here will remember calling 10 node boards to check their email, use gopher or post on Usenet.

      AOL is a remnant of that era, still offering its own interface to access the web even though its entirely unnecessary. But people like that, people like the boundaries AOL places because the internet can be a scary, confusing place and they simply arent interested and dont have the time to stick their heads out into the abyss. That BBS feel is something people liked in the 80s and still like today.

      But remember, the AOL bbs also has an access number at just about every major city in North America. If you own more than one home or travel a lot, you recognize this as being advantageous.

      But AOL simply did it better than the rest of the hybrid BBS-Internet companies. They printed up millions of CDs and found a way to get at least one to every person with a computer. Now they have a customer base of 90 million people and its very hard to compete with their brand leverage. Hell, through all the years of Microsoft Hegemoney they went with Netscape on an Internet Explorer dominated operating system (because Netscape also adds to the feel of offering AOL's own user interface).

      And now, do you even get any AOL CDs anymore? When is the last time you heard an AOL CD joke? AOL is standard on all computers and comes bundled with tons of software. To a new computer user AOL is often more obvious than MSN simply because of the brand power.

      I am not sure what you're angry about.
      Its just the way it is.
    • Sorry about my rant... I just have a lot of angst about these people.

      Try schadenfreude instead, it's a lot more fun.
    • Is the real reason AOL makes money is because the masses don't know better?

      Yes. Even though my father-in-law got DSL installed in the house and both his Mac and his wife's PC are connected through a router, my mother-in-law still insists on using AOL for her e-mail. At least I finally convinced her to just connect over the Internet via DSL instead of dialing up with a modem. I don't think she understands the difference so I just switched the setting for her one day and she said AOL runs really fast no

  • Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by saberworks ( 267163 ) on Saturday January 10, 2004 @04:57PM (#7939600)
    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.

    • Re:Who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by JediDan ( 214076 )
      Big players are the only ones to put broadband into a neighborhood. The local shops might provide it, but they just buy it from the local telco.

      Sooner or later some company(ies) will cover the planet in fiber optic cabling and the internet will move toward limits based only on routing speeds and hardware in your computer. Unfortunately we need to wait for such a glorious day to come and fool around with modems until then.
      • Actually, slashdot had a story a while ago about the county I used to live in, Mason County, WA, and how they put fiber to most of the local businesses and were offering broadband for reasonable rates. It was the local PUD (public utility district - basically, the government run electric company). But yeah, mostly it's done by large companies. After all, who else has the resources?
      • Big players are the only ones to put broadband into a neighborhood

        Ah, but they aren't. I just switched from big telco DSL to local company broadband... the local people use 900Mhz. OK, so you have to be in a fairly high density residential area to get this, but your statement can't be a blanket one for everybody.
      • > Big players are the only ones to put broadband
        > into a neighborhood. The local shops might provide
        > it, but they just buy it from the local telco.

        My ISP is Spring Valley Telephone, hardly a "Big Player". They offer DSL in the village six miles from here. My local telco is Century Tel. Not a "mom & pop" operation, but not a "Big Player" either. They also offer DSL in many areas (not mine, but then I couldn't afford it anyway).
    • The only advantage to a national ISP is for travelling business people that want to connect, and I bet that really isn't an issue.
    • Mindspring rocked back when it was just a local ISP... they were doing ptetty good keeping the service in ISP till the whole earthlink buyout debacle.

  • Plug: Dial-Up isn't dead! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Christianfreak ( 100697 ) on Saturday January 10, 2004 @04:58PM (#7939607) Homepage Journal
    http://wavetex.com/

    The dial-up is nation-wide. The wireless is expanding but its just in East Texas at the moment.

    Disclaimer: Yes I do work for these people, so buy something and help pay my salary :)

    In all seriousness I see this as a good thing. Smaller companies selling dial-up to local areas is usually cheaper and have much better service. Sometimes they even know what they are doing and usually their customers become a bit more savy than they would on AOL or MSN.

  • Why cares about big players? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by adb ( 31105 ) on Saturday January 10, 2004 @04:58PM (#7939608)
    Dialup is a local service, and local providers have always provided the best and cheapest connections.

  • I'm not dead yet... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cicatrix1 ( 123440 ) <cicatrix1 AT gmail DOT com> on Saturday January 10, 2004 @04:58PM (#7939609) Homepage
    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.

    You can survive without advertising. IMHO, most people who aren't very knowledgable in this area (I.E. someone who would have to choose between AOL or "something else") are more prone to be persuaded by word of mouth anyway. Also, I wouldn't bet against the fact that there are probably some parts of the world where MS has a "monopoly" (for lack of a better term =/ )on the local dialup market anyway.

  • yeah, but (Score:3, Funny)

    by theMerovingian ( 722983 ) on Saturday January 10, 2004 @04:59PM (#7939618) Journal

    what about the fat slob in the butterfly suit? [lalatimes.com]

  • Hey, I use MSN... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hey, I use MSN, and it's been working just FZZZTGLLLBEEEEEEEP####$&(%*$(*%&$(*%& (Carrier Lost)
  • ... and not a single one in New York, one of the largest cities in the US.
    • "... and not a single one in New York, one of the largest cities in the US."

      Really? [slashdot.org] I guess technically you're right, there was more than a single ad.
    • About a year ago or so I was assaulted by a pack of 50 or 60 rollerskating fruitcakes all dressed up in the MSN butterfly outfit, carrying signs with such witty slogans as "it's better with the butterfly". They were creating a nuisance on the sidewalks all around Lincoln Center - I think this was for the launch of MSN8 or something.


      I think they lost themselves any potential customers they might have had in the neighborhood that day.

  • I had no idea Microsoft even had dial-up, I wonder how they spent that marketing money.

    "It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware the Leopard.'" -- Douglas Adams, H2G2p

  • There are many many dail up ISPs.
    Its gotten to the point where just about everyone and there uncle is reselling dail up (like us http://isp.pigscanfly.ca ) .
    That being said there arent a whole heck of a loat of national dailup ISPs but thanks to romaing agreements you still have fairly good choice .

  • Satellite Internet Access (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 10, 2004 @05:10PM (#7939683)
    Dialup isn't the only option unless you're treed in.

    Disclaimer: I work for a company that does satellite TV (and occassional satellite internet installations). This is why I'm posting anonymously.

    The new DW6000 doesn't require installing software on your computer, it's all in the DW6000 unit. So you're no longer tied to Windows-only. As long as you're sighted-in to your assigned bird, then you're good to go. Yeah, rain-fade is a problem and there are occassional outages.

    Biggest problem: Tech support is absolutely abysmal. My last call to support was 2 hours, 6 minutes, 37 seconds and the problem still wasn't resolved (it's a long story, but the problem was at the NOC but the NOC people didn't see it that way).

    Caveat emptor, but still better than most rural dialup. Huge latency, so it's useless for games, webserving, etc. If you can afford it, try multilink bonding with 2 modems. If not, then you may want to consider DirecWay.

  • Here is yet another example of Microsoft NOT being an invincible force in any market they damn well please. Kinda like UltimateTV, MSN Messenger (heck, MSN itself), Xbox, etc. Unless they're giving it away for free with a Windows purchase, don't assume Microsoft offering will just magically take over a market.

  • Whoops, there goes my town's big employer. (Score:4, Informative)

    by temojen ( 678985 ) on Saturday January 10, 2004 @05:14PM (#7939723) Journal

    We have a big call centre here. MSN is one of their big clients. I guess most of those people will soon be out of work.

    From what I've heard, the big problem with MSN isn't the advertizing, it's that they install really buggy software ("MSN 8"). A lot of people ended up getting fired from the callcentre for telling MSN customers how to use the plain-old PPP settings & Internet Explorer/Outlook Express to use MSN. It solved their problems, but wasn't in the allowed script.

  • Who Needs "Big Players"? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by John Hasler ( 414242 ) on Saturday January 10, 2004 @05:17PM (#7939752) Homepage
    > This leaves exactly how many big players in
    > the dialup market?

    None at all, I hope. "Big players" differ from small ones only in advertising (more) and quality (less). And none of them have ever offered service in my area despite their lies about nationwide service.

    > Dialup is still the only option in many places.

    I wouldn't be able to afford anything else anyway.

  • Newsguy (Score:3, Informative)

    by jhines ( 82154 ) <john@jhines.org> on Saturday January 10, 2004 @05:18PM (#7939761) Homepage
    They use someone's national network, but they just added new modems in Wisconsin, so what ever system they use, is growing, not contracting.

    Even with broadband, there still is a use for dialup, especially for travel. If I had a laptop, the ability to dial up in Stevens Point, WI might come in handy if I decide to visit their famous Point beer brewery.

    • If you do visit the "point" be sure to do so in the winter months, when you can get "Point Bock" their most wonderful brew ever.

    • Even with broadband, there still is a use for dialup, especially for travel.

      Good point. A few months ago, I found myself on a road trip without net access at the hotel. Hopped out and picked up an AT&T Prepaid Internet CD. 20 hours for 20 bucks. One one hand, it's pretty much ports 80 and 443. You're supposed to use their SMTP and POP3. On the other hand, my home router does port forwarding (80 -> 22) and my ISP only blocks incoming 23. On the gripping hand, a week into the 2.5 week trip, I

  • Don't forget... (Score:5, Informative)

    by DragonMagic ( 170846 ) on Saturday January 10, 2004 @05:26PM (#7939807) Homepage
    The class-action lawsuit holding Best Buy and MSN accused of fraud for scanning MSN discs for people paying by debit or credit card and saying it's just for inventory reasons, and then six months later MSN would bill them, saying that the free period had ended, whether or not they used the access . . .

    That MSN really is one of the most expensive dialup services in the country, and does not have the most extensive dialup number ranges. Add to this poor lines in major cities (never could get Chicago or Philly lines to stay connected longer than eight minutes), and that there are far better alternatives (Netzero/Juno, etc.) . . .

    That in many areas, $25 is the same price as most cable systems are offering for an introductory offer. Get faster connections without having to tie up or get another phone line? Why would you stick with dialup?

    Just another failed business model for MS that was too late to be viable.

  • Alternatives... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by hendridm ( 302246 ) * on Saturday January 10, 2004 @05:29PM (#7939821) Homepage
    Get unlimited for far less [access4less.net] or start your own ISP! [yourownisp.com]

  • FYI (Score:2)

    by segment ( 695309 )
    For those who also work in the ISP business you may want to add to this or correct me. Dial-up access is still a money maker. At least on the east coast it is. ISP is a losing market of course unless you're Verizon. Reason for this statement is obvious. As a DSL provider, you're going through Verizon's lines, and when the shit hits the fan, don't expect them to do much if you're a reseller.

    This leaves exactly how many big players in the dialup market? Dialup is still the only option in many places. ISP's a

  • EarthLink/India/Philippines (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 10, 2004 @05:40PM (#7939887)
    I was a manager at Earthlink, in the Web Services Department. We had some kick-ass programmers there. Unfortunately, although our cool boss, Ranbir Chawla, from India, was a very good designer and coder too, he in turn reported to a backstabbing Hollywood special effects monster named Veronica Murdock.

    Veronica liked to appoint pretty girls to management status, bypassing the very talented software engineers. Veronica's idiots kept forcing stupid designs down our throats.

    Then she'd boast about how her EarthLink stock and options were worth hundreds of millions of dollars (which they were, once). Her boss, in turn, a former banker pretty-boy, was pure PR, no technical know-how.

    Fortunately, the VP and Exec VP screwed up a release of Webmail so badly that two million people's email in-boxes got lost, duplicated, or otherwise chewed.

    So Sky Dayton, then CEO, canned the fools. Then, when EarthLink's stock value plunged after the Mindspring "merger", the VP and Exec VP had used their stock as collateral on other market plays. We hope they lost everything.

    Anyway, it was always EarthLink's secret strategy to peel away AOL and MSN subscribers, using them as a farm system, and giving the more sophisticated users to earthLink, which admitted that this strategy doomed EarthLink to always being #2 or #3 in dialup subscribers. But EarthLink would have lower "churn" and thus make a profit.

    Anyway, all my techie friends at EarthLink lost their jobs when EarthLink outsourced to bangalore and the Philippines. The "Customer Support" people work from phone scripts; they know nothing.

    But that's the answer. If MSN gives up, EarthLink will be #2 to AOL. And all three suck, in different styles, anyway.

    Anybody know where Ranbir Chawla (good guy, though probably Asperger's) or Veronica Murdock (pure Evil, dressed for Success) have gone to? Inquiring minds want to know. Just post your answer here...
  • This leaves exactly how many big players in the dialup market? Dialup is still the only option in many places.

    Oh give me a break. First the "MS Bad" mantra is spewed like crazy, then when they actually pull out of a market, the same people cry foul. Ridiculous.

    • Re:Sheesh (Score:3, Interesting)

      by thebatlab ( 468898 )
      Although I like to be the first to play the devil's advocate when it comes to MS hypocricy here I don't think that statement was necessarily hypocritcal. Mainly b/c nobody cried foul.

      We know this is timothy and he likes to put in his little quips in on every story and generally likes to be very anti-MS. In this case I'm wiling to give him benefit of the doubt though that he was just raising a valid point about a lack of big names in the dial-up market.

      I can totally see where you would think it was him b

  • Just where is dialup the only available option? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by kc0dby ( 522118 ) on Saturday January 10, 2004 @05:53PM (#7939976) Homepage
    I could understand this maybe, oh, two or three years ago- but not now. I run a dialup ISP that markets in these rural areas that have been previously without broadband, and the few places that it doesn't make sense for one of the wireless players to show up and take all of my business, are the same places where I can't even set up access because of the cost of installing even a fractional T1 is over $1K / month.

    I guess I'm a mom and pop dialup, or at least just a one man operation with outsourced support, but I think that portion of my business will have to RIP within a few years with Netzero, wired broadband, and 802.11 networks chipping away at the customer base.

    My latest market that I had to pull out my access numbers was, get this, a town with 300 people that one of the wireless broadband providers decided to set up a node in. I went from 200 customers to 20 within a matter of 6 months.

    I'd rather just bank the profits and sell off all the equipment before I try and protect my markets by forcing users into contracts. Perhaps its time to just get out of that business entirely, and use my "billing week" to more productive ends.
  • > Dialup is still the only option in many places.

    Some of us decided shopping Amazon in a speedy fashion wasn't worth the price of broadband and have chosen dial-up despite a multitude of other, pricier options.

  • EarthLink is fine by me. Or local providers. (Score:4, Informative)

    by valmont ( 3573 ) on Saturday January 10, 2004 @07:42PM (#7940921) Homepage Journal

    i'll start out by saying that if there is a small, local ISP near you, it might be a good way to go, provided you don't travel or plan to move in this lifetime.

    with that said ...

    i've been a satisfied EarthLink customer for many years now. I switched to their broadband offering since it first came out, and have gladly seen their services dramatically improve. EarthLink makes a lot a sense in my case, as i do travel around quite a bit and find it easy to find and connect to a local POP while using a portion of the 20 hours of free dial-up time that come with my broadband account. They have consistently been at the forefront of spam-fighting efforts, be them legal, or thru software. Their spam-fighting solutions are top-notch, especially since their recently-released Total Access for Mac OS X which allows you to sync your Mac OS X Address Book data with their server, allowing you to almost instantly "whitelist" everyone you know, as Mail.app makes it easy/automatic to add contacts to your address book based on mails received and/or sent. I do also appreciate their other initiatives to fight other Internet annoyances: Pop-Up blocker, server-side scrubbing of e-mail-bound viruses (Virus Blocker), SpyWare blocker which have been resulting in my having to spend less time trying to help my PC-using friends debug their machines. They've also recently released for both Mac OS X and windows, their "EarthLink Accelerator [earthlink.net]" which is totally bad-ass and results in a dramatic accelration of web-surfing, especially when i use my 15" Apple Aluminum Powerbook's bluetooth connectivity with my Sony Ericsson t610 to dial-up to my EarthLink account at speeds that are limited to less than 14.4Kbps. EarthLink Accelerator is technology licensed from Propel Networks, these guys are really really cool.

    so again, Mom and Pop shops are a good alternative, but do keep EarthLink in mind if you're an impatient Internet user. (which i am, to a great extent heh).

  • Big players? In dialup? Dialup is little guys... (Score:3, Informative)

    by jonadab ( 583620 ) on Saturday January 10, 2004 @08:08PM (#7941085) Homepage Journal
    > This leaves exactly how many big players in the dialup market?

    Ummm... Well, there's AOL, but nobody uses them 'cause they suck. There's
    Earthlink, but nobody uses them much either. There'ss MSN... I think I know
    one person who uses MSN. There's Juno, but almost nobody uses Juno either,
    because it's inferior. A few cheapskates use that NetZero, but to most of us
    it's worth the extra ten bucks a month to get decent service. There's demon,
    but you have to live in the UK.

    In any given community un the US, on the other hand, there are anywhere between
    3 and 30 local or regional outfits who all charge the same monthly rate for
    unmetered access, provide enough lines that you never have trouble getting on,
    provide good, solid, reliable email, access to usenet if you want it, and
    (gasp) have an office within thirty minutes' drive of your house, and a tech
    support guy who lives in the area and speaks English. We call these places
    "ISPs", and almost everyone I know uses one of them.

    I get my access through Bright Choice, which is located in Ontario, about
    20 minutes from here. They provide the dialup lines but outsource most of
    the other stuff to bright.net, which is local to Ohio. There are a number
    of competitors. Probably the single most popular ISP around here is richnet,
    which is based in Mansfield, about 30 minutes from here. Almost nobody uses
    AOL, though *theoretically* they're based in Columbus, an hour from here.
    MSN is (very marginally) more popular than AOL because they have a reseller
    here in town (at the local Radio Shack), but I've not heard good things about
    their service from their users. Richnet and bright.net OTOH get good word
    of mouth recommendations consistently. I bet richnet has a 30% market share
    in Galion, maybe more. With so many mostly-identical options, that's quite
    a lot of share for one outfit to have.
  • Just as you shouldn't live in a desert, or in a flood plain, you shouldn't live where there's no broadband access. It's just that simple. :)

  • Kill the damned butterfly (Score:3)

    by Lobsang ( 255003 ) on Saturday January 10, 2004 @09:15PM (#7941491) Homepage
    Microsoft started a $300 million marketing campaign 14 months ago to attract dial-up users, and has decided to abandon that effort.

    Does it mean we'll get rid of the obnoxious butterfly commercials? I've never used their service and I do not intend to, but those commercials make me feel like grabbing the remote and turning off the TV immediately.
  • You could almost interpet this as criticizing Microsoft for not attempting to dominate the dialup market.

  • Not a big loss by another measure (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kriston ( 7886 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @12:07AM (#7942356) Homepage Journal
    For mass-marketted dialup services, the soft departure of MSN from dialup will be a big hit and a boon for the other mass-market services like AOL, Earthlink, and friends--but don't forget the dialup resellers. It's still a profitable and growing business. I pay $9.95/month for unlimited dialup access through a popular USENET provider who resells the dialup service of Megapop.

  • There's still money being made in dialup, (Score:3, Interesting)

    by qtp ( 461286 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @01:34AM (#7942758) Journal
    but there's no money being made in trying to corner that market.

    The problem at MSN is not that they are selling dialup, but that they thought that it would be proffitabl;e to spend $314 Million on advertizing a service that sells for so little in a market that has so many competitors.

    I wonder how much profit AOL actually sees from thier service. I'm guessing very little if any.

    Attempting to dominate the dialup service market through extensive advertising seems more a play to attract investors or increase stock market value than it does an attempt to make an honest living.

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