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jbob
Reach Out and Touch Someone
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join:2004-04-26
Little Rock, AR
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jbob to Robert

Premium Member

to Robert

Re: The Comcast Newsgroups Service Discontinued

said by Robert:

said by Doctor Olds:

said by CableTool:

When News groups were added originally there was no price increase. So removing it would not merit a price reduction.
What exact date range was Usenet "added originally" by Comcast? You do know Usenet existed before WWW, right?
You misunderstood. Cabletool was referring to when Comcast originally started offering newsgroup access to their customers either through Comcast's own servers or using giganews.
But that's exactly his point. Did Comcast offer NNTP access from the start whether it be from it's own newservers or someone elses? I've had internet access from back to the mid 90's. Every ISP I have ever had offered NNTP as part of the package. When I first got cable with Cox while living in Georgia, a News Service was part of the package. When I moved to Arkansas(late 2003) and started Comcast service, NNTP access was also part of the package offered by Comcast. So for some it really doesn't matter when Comcast first made it available. I signed up with Comcast and it offered News access as part of my sign up. So from that perspective I can see why some might see this a less service. But with the speed increases maybe this balances it out.
I myself am not really complaining however. FWIW 2 GB monthly was alright for my usage. Luckily I still have NNTP access via my backup ISP, AT&T DSL. I never use binaries anyway.

NormanS
I gave her time to steal my mind away
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NormanS

MVM

said by jbob:

Every ISP I have ever had offered NNTP as part of the package.
When I started with Astragate, a dial-up ISP available in the S.F. Bay Area, in 1999, they did not offer NNTP service until a couple of months after we signed up.

NNTP service has a cost to carry it, and I suspect most ISPs offered a very small budget to maintain it. Which is why most ISP news service was crappy. SBC took over Prodigy, and ran the old Prodigy (excellent) news service into the ground. Guess which company was more profitable before the takeover? SBC took over AT&T (Worldnet Service), and is running the old AT&T (Worldnet Service, excellent) news service into the ground. Guess which company was more profitable before the takeover? SBC started calling themselves, "AT&T", after taking over AT&T. SBC never had good, or even just "decent", NNTP service. And they just killed all of 'alt.binaries.*' last July.

AOL stopped carrying NNTP service years ago, yet just last June, or so, they acceded to Mario Cuomo's demands. Why? Because if they did not, he'd take them to court to force them to stop doing what they had long not been doing. Companies are in business for profit, not principle. While Cuomo is wrong, in principle, it would cost money to prove it in court; a cost which would deprecate profit. So AOL chose "profit" over "principle", and agreed to join Cuomo in announcing that they would no longer do that which they had already stopped doing years ago. And AT&T, rather than facing the court costs of fighting Cuomo, also announced that they were joining his "initiative". And Comcast...

None of the ISPs were making money off of NNTP service. They weren't losing money, but they weren't making any, either.

Do you know what happened to the free NNTP services? They were "labors of love", run by people who had a little extra money. When the world beat paths to their servers, they couldn't cover the costs of the bandwidth, and the server capacity; they folded.

And what happened to Supernews? They were a premium NNTP provider, but they ultimately couldn't cover their cost of operation, and were bought by Giganews. The premium services still standing have to cover their costs of operation, or they will go under. That is just the nature of private enterprise.

Robert Anson Heinlein understood that, when he coined the "TANSTAAFL" acronym in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress: "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch".