Cheese
Premium
join:2003-10-26
Naples, FL
clubs: | Dialup is dead for the most part....
And they want to buy MORE dead companies, and they are sinking like the titanic?  |
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Authority
Obama Biden '12
join:2000-03-29
Beverly Hills, CA | I keep telling people to dump Earthlink NOW before they disappear overnight!
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OS X on a PC? Yup! »en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSx86 |
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nasadude
join:2001-10-05
Rockville, MD | A for effort
against a stacked deck of politicians, the FCC and the incumbents, Earthlink tried like hell to make a go of it.
gotta give em props for trying. |
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djrobx
join:2000-05-31
Valencia, CA
 ·PHONE POWER
 ·AT&T U-Verse
·AT&T CallVantage
·Time Warner VOIP
 ·RoadRunner Cable
1 edit | A barely animated corpse indeed
Earthlink started out in Glendale, CA. It used to be one of those small independent ISPs that you looked to for good service. They employed many of my friends as tech support agents.
But they kept growing and growing and seemed to lose everything that might make them distinctive. For a brief stint they wrangled a 1500/384 package out of Covad that was better than what the majority of telcos were offering at the time, but it was never really advertised. For the most part they advertised and offered "lowest common denominator" speeds and hoped it would be good enough. Then they outsourced their tech support to India. If they can't even claim to have good customer service, and offer no technical advantages, why would anyone bother choosing them over the phone or cable company, save for a handful of dialup users that don't want to lose their @earthlink.net email address? If you're going to be an alternative to the 900lb gorilla, you better do things right. Good ISPs like Sonic.net and DSLExtreme show that there is still a market for the independents if you keep your customers in mind.
Latching onto other new delivery mechanisms would probably be a good strategy, if any of them were really viable against the cable and phone company. The triple play discounts we're now seeing might be the final nail in their coffin.
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Laser eye surgery rocks! I love frickin' laser beams. |
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jsimmons
Premium,MVM
join:2000-04-24
Falls Church, VA
2 edits | said by djrobx  :For a brief stint they wrangled a 1500/384 package out of Covad that was better than what the majority of telcos were offering at the time, but it was never really advertised. It was a GREAT DSL service - I know... I had it for a few years. At that time Earthlink was buying up small ISP's who tried to make a go of it in DSL land.
It was a great option until Cox cable blew it away in my area - both price wise and performance wise. I haven't looked back. Sorry to see them on such a downward spiral, though.
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"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler."
- Albert Einstein
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SilverSurfer
join:2007-08-19
| Hey, don't knock it
Any other ideas? Resuscitate the "Juice Boosted" brand? Start selling flowers like United Online? LMAO - The State of Pennsylvania has been investing in buggy whip technology (old people) for decades. In fact, residents don't matter to the State Legislature unless you're 65 or older. |
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ANON67
@rr.com
| Why Earthlink is doing the right thing.
Earthlink has the infrastructure to keep dial up going. What Earthlink should do is buy AOL's dialup subscribers, and manage that. There are still many rural areas without internet or where internet would be very expensive. A lot of us don't realize how fortunate we are to be in a big city or in a suburb of a city.
Earthlink does have phone customers. However Earthlink is worth a fraction of the its price. I put it along side Packet 8, in terms of survival. One of the things about Earthlink is that its a smaller company and that might help in terms of privacy issues; We should support Earthlink only for the reason as it gives us more choice to move away from existing providers. But other than that I just don't see a reason for Earthlink to exist, and frankly Packet 8 either, however before they go under both will make last ditch efforts to stay alive. |
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BF69
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN | As long as 20%
of the population lives in area where ISPs show ZERO interest in providing broadband and where the only internet is dial-up, overpriced and crappy satelite and/or overpriced and crappy mobile internet, dial-up will have customers. |
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Cheese
Premium
join:2003-10-26
Naples, FL
clubs:
| reply to ANON67
Re: Why Earthlink is doing the right thing.
said by ANON67 :
Earthlink has the infrastructure to keep dial up going. What Earthlink should do is buy AOL's dialup subscribers, and manage that. There are still many rural areas without internet or where internet would be very expensive. A lot of us don't realize how fortunate we are to be in a big city or in a suburb of a city.
Earthlink does have phone customers. However Earthlink is worth a fraction of the its price. I put it along side Packet 8, in terms of survival. One of the things about Earthlink is that its a smaller company and that might help in terms of privacy issues; We should support Earthlink only for the reason as it gives us more choice to move away from existing providers. But other than that I just don't see a reason for Earthlink to exist, and frankly Packet 8 either, however before they go under both will make last ditch efforts to stay alive.
More choice to move away? I don't really think they have much to offer anyone at this point. |
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battleop
join:2005-09-28
00000 | reply to ANON67
This could only be a short term (maybe 5 years) to keep them afloat. Eventually they will have to find another way to make money. |
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Dogfather
Premium
join:2007-12-26
Laguna Hills, CA | reply to nasadude
Re: A for effort
This is what happens when gov't is for sale to the highest bidder. |
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jimbo48
join:2000-11-17
Hayward, CA
 ·AT&T DSL Service
·EarthLink
| Should I stay or should I go?
I've tried to be loyal to ELNK despite a series of faux-pas from their sales dept compounded by the castration of a once excellent Tech support line. I need an ISP that is going to be around even if it is Comcast (yuck) to keep me afloat working form home. Right now I'm provisioned by ELNK through COVAD, getting about a 2.3Mbit/300Kbit service. It's "fairly stable except the frequent loss of sync of my VOIP ATA router. Rumors abound on the demise of ELNK as well as COVAD but nothing from ELNK formally.
Arghhh... The thought of re-provisioning and changing an email I've had for 10 years is a daunting thought. |
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Dogfather
Premium
join:2007-12-26
Laguna Hills, CA
·Cox HSI
·Verizon FIOS
·Cox VOIP
·ViaTalk
·RoadRunner Cable
·MegaPath
·Verizon west (ex G..
·Time Warner VOIP
1 edit | Well which is it?
We endlessly hear about how the US sucks because broadband deployment is horrible, yet in the next breath we hear that a company that sells dial up is doomed? The only thing that has changed is that ELN can't sell their services over next gen BB like FiOS or U-Verse. Yep, everyone has that
The reason ELN was bombing is because as previously mentioned their customer service sucked while they still tried to charge $50 for DSL everyone else was charging $20-$40 for. |
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tschmidt
Premium,MVM
join:2000-11-12
Milford, NH
 ·Hollis Hosting
·Verizon Online DSL
·Fairpoint Communic..
| reply to BF69
Re: As long as 20%
said by BF69 :dial-up will have customers. While dialup will become an ever smaller percentage of First-Mile access mix it ought to be a viable business for years to come. It still is the most universal access you can get.
I maintained a dialup account for several years after I had broadband as a fallback. After a while decided to drop it as an unnecessary expense. Broadband has been very reliable and when outages occurred slow transfer rate of dialup was painful.
/tom |
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hayabusa3303
Over 200 mph
Premium
join:2005-06-29
clubs: | maybe
With caps coming to cable and dsl, alot of people will flip back. People want a set price not 60 then 110 a month for the same service.
why is there a high turn over rate on cell phones. same thing |
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Fox McCloud
Crazy like a fox.
join:2006-07-23
·Embarq
 ·Sprint Mobile Broa..
|  R&D
perhaps they should invest in a really good engineering team to recover the last few bits lost with v.92 so they can come up with a v.9X (or whatever) that supports 64 kilobits down and XX kilobits up.
Sadly, I don't think that dream will ever be realized.
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"True Patriotism is more closely linked with dissent than it is to conformity and a blind desire for safety and security...I accept the definition of patriotism as that effort to resist abusive state power." -Ron Paul |
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TMMerlin
The Devil made me do it
join:2003-06-19
Oxford, MI
·EarthLink
| Knock on wood !
EL customer for 12 years ..kindah neat with @mindspring.com. Nostalgic of the "good ole days".
#30/mo for DSL ..never installed any of their software, well once and then I deleted it ..I do a better portal job myself.
So .. every 14 months I call them and say "Hey .. renew me again for 12 months and give me my 2 month Customer Appreciation credit"..which they gladly do and then start the 12 month clock, again.
Oh well ..nice and solid DSL line ..seldom have any trouble.
I hope dial-up works for them ..that way I can keep my very stable DSL service and of course ...@mindspring.com...
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Some people hear their own inner voices with great clearness and they live by what they hear. Such people become crazy but they become legend. |
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SigEp1995
join:2000-11-17
Alumni Hall
| reply to Cheese
Re: Dialup is dead for the most part....
I guess I should root for them since they're based here in Atlanta, but I just can't see that happening. Ever since they had killed a great company (MindSpring), it all went downhill from there. They must be the new AOL.
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| Sigma Phi Epsilon | My Ride | |
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backness
join:2005-07-08
K2P OW2 | reply to Authority
why don't you put a short on the stock? |
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amigo_boy
join:2005-07-22
Tempe, AZ
·Cox HSI
·magicjack.com
1 edit | reply to TMMerlin
Re: Knock on wood !
said by TMMerlin :Oh well ..nice and solid DSL line ..seldom have any trouble. Same here. I'm at the outer edge of DSL availability. I was happy when EL could give me DSL back in 2001. My speed was something like 128kbs. Today it's about 300kbs. I don't need much speed. And, I like that it's constant (not competing with a bunch of users on the same cable loop during prime-time).
But, I'm planning to cancel in 1-3 months. I'm leaving for 3 months overseas. I'll cancel EL and my phone. $65 a month. When I return I'll get Cox cable for $25 a month. I can use a combination of cell and VOIP for phone service.
I just can't justify paying $65 a month. I also like the idea that I can cancel Cox whenever I want, and then resume a few months later (I spend a lot of time out of the country). No contracts. So, I can save $75 over three months like that. Where, with EL and Qwest, I'd pay $190 because I can't easily turn those services off and on.
Mark |
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