AOL tries to force subscriber to switch to broadband by upping dial up prices ..

Johnny

.. Commodore ..
Political Access
Joined
12 Jan 2004
Messages
5,015
Now isn't this special. Their dial up sucks, so now they want to try and force people to switch to their broadband service, which sux also lol ..

AOL Hikes Dial-Up Rates to Match Broadband
Wednesday, February 22, 2006


NEW YORK — America Online Inc., seeking to encourage its subscribers to sign up for high-speed connections, is raising the price of its main dial-upplan to equal that of its new broadband offerings.
That means most subscribers will pay $25.90 a month for either dial-up or broadband beginning March 9, although AOL is offering discounts to dial-up subscribers who commit to a year. AOL currently charges $23.90 a month for unlimited dial-up access.
"We're doing this because a majority of AOL members will be able to get high-speed connections and access the AOL service for this new price," spokeswoman Anne Bentley said Tuesday. "Hopefully it's an encouragement for them to get high-speed connections."
Although AOL has been shifting its focus to providing free articles, video and other materials on its ad-supported Web sites, the company sees paid broadband accounts as key to making that strategy work.
AOL believes broadband will help boost usage and hence advertising. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, those with broadband at home are 52 percent more likely than dial-up subscribers to use the Internet on a given day, and the typical broadband user spends about 23 percent more time online daily.
In recent weeks, AOL announced partnerships with leading broadband providers to provide high-speed AOL subscription packages, which include the Internet connection, AOL e-mail addresses with unlimited storage and parental-control and security software.
The deals are with the four remaining Baby Bells — BellSouth Corp., Verizon Communications Inc., AT&T Inc. and Qwest Communications International Inc. — and with two leading cable providers — Time Warner Cable, which like AOL is a unit of Time Warner Inc., and Charter Communications Inc.
AOL said most of its current customers will be served by at least one of those companies.
Details vary, but the packages generally cost $25.90 a month, $29.90 through BellSouth. The Qwest plan is for the first year only.
With Verizon and Time Warner, it is a limited-speed, 768-kilobit-per-second offering. It is even slower — 384 kilobits — for Charter. Dial-up is about 50 kilobits, while standard broadband lines typically reach 1.5 megabits or higher.
Subscribers are being notified by e-mail that they can essentially get high-speed for the same price as dial-up.
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 (the broadband plans through the Baby Bells also require the year's commitment).
But if they do nothing, they are kept on the dial-up plan and will be charged $2 more a month.
Left unchanged are the $14.95 limited plan with 10 hours of dial-up and the $239.40 annual prepaid plan, which works out to $19.95 a month and allows subscribers to get a partial refund if they cancel early.
As of Dec. 31, AOL had about 19.5 million U.S. subscribers, down from a peak of 26.7 million in September 2002. About 75 percent are on dial-up.
I will say it again; AOL SUX !!
 
o.k So I helped you out a little bit .. I have to start looking at the articles closer. I could swear I didn't see that there. Sorry dude .. :(
 
Hahaha, not a big deal.

There wasn't a thread created for it, perhaps it will spur some constructive conversation :)
 
I'll just include my responce to the news item itself...

Son Goku said:
So, lets see, they want to increase the price of their crappy dialup service as a means to encourage people to use their "AO-Hell on top of your broadband connection", albeit as many broadband users already know, one doesn't need that added layer added onto their broadband service.

Just about then, would be time for Net Zero and other such companies to launch a pre-emptive and competitive advertizing war to go after people who might leave AOL...

Anyhow, I left Qwest DSL many years ago when they went with MSN as the default around here. No way in hell would I go with America Offline rather then M$N... I wonder if this could result in many customers walking away, rather then getting migrated (if they go the way of a "forced" migration such as the notice I got from Qwest many years ago. In my case, I ended up going with an ISP Speakeasy, which is hosted through their competitive CLEC, namely Covad...

I feel sorry for the cable customers though. At least in the DSL space one can go with a competitive ISP and doesn't have to take the default. Cable hasn't tended to offer such an option, so if AO-Hell is what they chose to provide, it's AO-Hell or something other then cable...
 

Members online

No members online now.

Latest profile posts

Also Hi EP and people. I found this place again while looking through a oooollllllldddd backup. I have filled over 10TB and was looking at my collection of antiques. Any bids on the 500Mhz Win 95 fix?
Any of the SP crew still out there?
Xie wrote on Electronic Punk's profile.
Impressed you have kept this alive this long EP! So many sites have come and gone. :(

Just did some crude math and I apparently joined almost 18yrs ago, how is that possible???
hello peeps... is been some time since i last came here.
Electronic Punk wrote on Sazar's profile.
Rest in peace my friend, been trying to find you and finally did in the worst way imaginable.

Forum statistics

Threads
62,015
Messages
673,494
Members
5,621
Latest member
naeemsafi
Back