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story category Earthlink Lives. Sort Of.
Company now profitable, but future in doubt
(old news - 01:37PM Monday Feb 09 2009)
tags: business · EarthLink
Tipped by TKJunkMail See Profile
Earthlink released their fourth quarter earnings last week, posting a yearly profit of $189.6 million in 2008. However, Earthlink recently lost $80 million on Muni-Fi, their investments in broadband over powerline (BPL) have gone nowhere, the government says they can't share access to next-generation broadband networks, and their effort to run an MVNO (Helio) flamed out spectacularly. So while Earthlink is leaner and more profitable, it's not exactly clear what they plan to do to make money after 14 years as an ISP. The carrier recently stated it was going to focus on acquiring dial-up operators (including AOL's dial-up customers) -- but now says that is no longer happening.

Related:
  1. Earthlink Threatens To Shut Down Philly Wi-Fi
  2. Earthlink Closing Philly Wi-Fi Network June 12
  3. Earthlink Free Of Money Pit Helio -- Now What?
  4. Earthlink Pins Future Hopes On......Dial-Up?
  5. More Job Cuts At Earthlink
  6. Earthlink Death Watch Postponed
  7. Earthlink Struggles With Earth Day Outage
  8. Earthlink Still Clings To Life
Forums » Earthlink Lives. Sort Of.
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keyboard5684

join:2001-08-01
Youngsville, PA
·Teliax VOIP
·WestPAnet Inc.
·WestPAnet Inc. CA..

Bye

This company bought out the ISP I worked for in 2000. No severance, nothing, just your fired along with 200 other people. I was a lead engineer for the ISP.

They took the dial-up customers, shut off all DSL customers and any other broadband, and moved any T1 and higher circuits. That was it, and they lost over 50% of those customers within 3 months.

I have no pitty for this evil company and am glad to see that they will never go anywhere.
permalink · 2009-02-09 13:52:19 · Reply to this

Eat Me

join:2002-09-25
Sussex, NJ
·PenTeleData
·Future Nine Corpor..
·VOIPo
·Vonage

Re: Bye

My experience was with them on the DSL side.

They claimed I would get up to 1.5mb down, but I ended up getting 768, and for the same price I was paying Verizon for 1.5mb. I had to end up paying the etf to get rid of them, and it was real hell to cancel too.
permalink · 2009-02-09 13:58:20 · Reply to this
hoyleysox

join:2003-11-07
Long Beach, CA
·Cox HSI
·Time Warner Cable

 If they bought the ISP in 2000, Earthlink should record a significant write down in goodwill for buying right before the telecom bust. Take a little consolation that Earthlink almost certainly lost $ on the deal.

I agree that Earthlink will never go anywhere. I am not aware of any value that they add. I think they keep customers who are reluctant to lose their email address by switching to another carrier.
permalink · 2009-02-09 14:58:52 · Reply to this
lovswr

join:2001-09-15
Stockbridge, GA

Re: Bye

That would be me. I still have my same mindspring email address since like '96. By the way, mindspring bought earthlink & then changed the name of the whole shebang (a la SBC sandwiches)...to Earthlink!
--
lovswr = good hivswr = bad
permalink · 2009-02-09 16:30:49 · Reply to this
gigante

join:2000-06-30
Spring, TX

Re: Bye

Sky Dalton loves you.
permalink · 2009-02-09 17:24:51 · Reply to this
brianstretch

join:2001-12-31
Ann Arbor, MI		 Ha! I thought I was the only one doing that. I got Mindspring when they bought out PSINet's Interramp dialup service. Mindspring was great, one of those really well run companies that rarely exist anymore.
permalink · 2009-02-09 18:49:38 · Reply to this
questionable

join:2005-10-18
Phoenix, AZ		 Actually it was a merger and they decided that Earthlink was a better name hence why they kept it. Charles Brewer left after 1 year as CEO and Sky took over...

Earthlink killed the 10 Core Values!
permalink · 2009-02-10 08:20:45 · Reply to this
ISurfTooMuch

join:2007-04-23
Tuscaloosa, AL
said by keyboard5684 See Profile :

This company bought out the ISP I worked for in 2000. No severance, nothing, just your fired along with 200 other people. I was a lead engineer for the ISP.

They took the dial-up customers, shut off all DSL customers and any other broadband, and moved any T1 and higher circuits. That was it, and they lost over 50% of those customers within 3 months.

I have no pitty for this evil company and am glad to see that they will never go anywhere.
You didn't happen to work for OneMain.com, did you? That's who employed me, and I think the only reason I got severance was because I was already covered under a previous severance plan from another, earlier, drawn out round of layoffs.

I'm not sure what happened to our local DSL customers, but many of our dial-up customers bolted after the switchover. Not long after I was laid off, I was wearing my EarthLink shirt while shopping in Wal-Mart, and a lady approached me and asked if I worked for them. I said no, that I had worked for the local OneMain ISP that got shut down. She then explained that her service had gone to crap after EarthLink took over, and she really missed us. I thanked her and got at least a little satisfaction out of that conversation that we had all done a good job.
permalink · 2009-02-09 16:41:38 · Print · Reply to this
keyboard5684

join:2001-08-01
Youngsville, PA
·Teliax VOIP
·WestPAnet Inc.
·WestPAnet Inc. CA..

Re: Bye

OneMain bought Penncom (the ISP I worked for) about 2 months before Earthlink bought OneMain.

OneMain was a joke, they where a bunch of investors that just bought a bunch of ISPs before Earthlink could and then sold them all to Earthlink at a higher price that what they would have paid. That is all OneMain was, not an ISP, but a group of investors that bought then quickly sold the whole group to make massive amounts of money. (My non-disclosure is moot at this point, sue me)

Local DSL customers, according to how Earthlink did it, if they could be switched over to an ATM circuit that could be shot down to there data center then fine, if not, they were shut off period.

T1, DS3s, etc, can all be moved so that was not an issue.

That story is what I heard a lot. After the local ISP was part of the borg basically the service went to hell. Honestly this was partly because of different dial-up servers. For example, at that time we used Lucent portmasters and Earthlink was using something I cannot even remember, but larger concentration units.
permalink · 2009-02-10 08:25:53 · Print · Reply to this
ISurfTooMuch

join:2007-04-23
Tuscaloosa, AL

Re: Bye

I think you were right in the investors' strategy, but I'm not sure how much money they actually made, since OneMain stock tanked right before EarthLink bought them. The way I understood it was that, once the stock went in the toilet, EarthLink swooped in and grabbed it. Of course, the top guys still might have made money off the deal. I was too far down the food chain to know.

My ISP (Internet Partners of America) was fortunately never integrated into the OneMain billing/user management system (Remember the utter POS that B.O.S.S. was?), so we were pretty much left alone until the end. It was a good ride, kind of rocky at times, but we had good people there, and we had fun while it lasted.
permalink · 2009-02-10 09:37:00 · Print · Reply to this

Matt
Take me down to the paradise city
Premium
join:2003-07-20
Jamestown, NC

Good for them

Earthlink will always have a special place in my heart from the days of their humble beginnings. I'm glad to see them doing well (a $180 million net profit is nothing to sneeze at) even in this sour economy.
permalink · 2009-02-09 13:53:05 · Reply to this

Dogfather
Premium
join:2007-12-26
Laguna Hills, CA
1 edit

Gov't should reverse course on line sharing

Since Verizon gets to tear up public property to plant their money tree, they should have to line share.
permalink · 2009-02-09 13:53:11 · Reply to this

Shack

join:2002-01-17
Bloomington, IN

Re: Gov't should reverse course on line sharing

Agreed
permalink · 2009-02-09 13:59:55 · Reply to this

tad2020

join:2007-07-17
Orange, CA		 Or they could invest in/encourage build outs of muni-fiber with open access in smaller cities that are being skipped by the telcos.
permalink · 2009-02-09 14:29:28 · Reply to this
patcat88

join:2002-04-05
Jamaica, NY

Re: Gov't should reverse course on line sharing

said by tad2020 See Profile :

Or they could invest in/encourage build outs of muni-fiber with open access in smaller cities that are being skipped by the telcos.
Yep, be a UTOPIA ISP.

Its hard to find what Earthlink is good at, or can specialize/value added features in. Offer dial up modem bonding maybe? Make a FON clone? myspace/facebook/social networking profile development/consulting ?
permalink · 2009-02-09 16:54:35 · Print · Reply to this

tad2020

join:2007-07-17
Orange, CA
·AT&T DSL Service

Re: Gov't should reverse course on line sharing

Their my ISP via TWC. It nice cause their $5 less than TWC for internet only.

Last year when TWC finally did a network upgrade, uVerse was coming and they only offered 5/300, and I got boosted up to 8/800, but since January I'm back to 5/300. My boss lives in the next city over (but its the same CO) and his speeds have been affected similarly but he bought service directly from TWC after the upgrades happened. My guess is that TWC felt no threat from uVerse after all and they redacted the network upgrades.
permalink · 2009-02-09 18:14:31 · Print · Reply to this

jadebangle
Premium
join:2007-05-22
Olathe, KS
·SureWest Internet
·AT&T Yahoo
·Comcast

I personally do not care how much they make or loses

Thats for the benefit of the CEO who greed are insatiable or never satisfied.
Its like selling ISDN as the next fastest broadband and saying faster x times faster then dialup.
Too bad most of those profit are never reinvested they are just extra income for the CEO to sit on top of it and get rich quick.

I'm tired of this bs marketing that upsell something as faster and faster but in reality is just an inferior product to make lots of money... Not even next generation... more like yesterday's stuff is being sold as today's best slice bread.

In a capitalist world run by greed and selfish few that only cares about ripping ppl off the pipe dream will either never happen or takes forever to come out...in special case when we are bleed dry as a bone and then will be offered slowly to select few state of America so the rest of us who don't have it can drool on it.
permalink · 2009-02-09 13:56:34 · Print · Reply to this
jester121
Premium
join:2003-08-09
Lake Zurich, IL

Re: I personally do not care how much they make or loses

I agree with everything you said, except the part I didn't understand.
permalink · 2009-02-09 15:09:21 · Reply to this

Goober
Premium
join:2000-12-17
Naperville, IL

Re: I personally do not care how much they make or loses

There were parts that you did?

I've got a stuffy head froma cold right now and the post just gave me a headache.
permalink · 2009-02-09 15:11:57 · Reply to this
jester121
Premium
join:2003-08-09
Lake Zurich, IL

Re: I personally do not care how much they make or loses

Just the first three paragraphs were confusing.
permalink · 2009-02-09 15:15:15 · Reply to this

Goober
Premium
join:2000-12-17
Naperville, IL

Re: I personally do not care how much they make or loses

Really? I didn't get the last paragraph either. Must be my stuffy head . . .
permalink · 2009-02-09 15:17:03 · Reply to this
jester121
Premium
join:2003-08-09
Lake Zurich, IL

Re: I personally do not care how much they make or loses

Oh my bad, I guess there were 4 paragraphs total. Didn't understand that one either.
permalink · 2009-02-09 16:00:31 · Reply to this

Goober
Premium
join:2000-12-17
Naperville, IL
·Comcast
·WOW Internet and C..

Re: I personally do not care how much they make or loses

I think I'm seeing things. There are only 3 paragraphs like you originally said. I think I'm hallucinating the 4th.

Whatever, he's got me completely off at this point. That and my sniffles and bleary eyes.

I think the summary is, "Earthlink be damned."
permalink · 2009-02-09 16:17:56 · Reply to this
hottboiinnc
ME

join:2003-10-15
Cleveland, OH

Resell EVDO

they can take up reselling Sprint's EVDO network like Slingshot does. Maybe they should call DSL Extreme and get into the DSL game again.
permalink · 2009-02-09 14:19:18 · Reply to this

DrStrange
Technically feasible
Premium
join:2001-07-23
West Hartford, CT
·Stephouse Networks
·magicjack.com
·EarthLink

offshore tech support: you get what you pay for

Earthlink lost me as a customer when they botched a hardware migration on my DSL line [forced hardware migration from AT&T to Covad splitters at my CO]. Since I run a small computer services business, I waited patiently for 3 or 4 weeks for them to figure out what they did [after politely explaining it multiple times to the Indian tier 1, 2 and 3 tech support folks]. After Earthlink wasted a ton of money sending a new modem I didn't need and scheduling two AT&T truck rolls to my premises, they declared the line TNF.

I switched ISPs to another Covad partner and they had the [same] line up and running at twice the speed of the Earthlink connection within a week. This ISP has tech support here in the US. The one issue I've had with them was resolved within three hours [in the middle of the night]. I got a call from the owner of the ISP who figured out the problem and fixed it personally.

Earthlink would be in much better shape if they'd hire even a handful of knowledgeable US-based techs to deal with the small percentage of problems that the offshore support people can't [or are told not to] understand. Now that they're turning a profit, they should invest it in creating these jobs to help themselves and the country.
permalink · 2009-02-09 15:15:02 · Print · Reply to this

fatness
subtle
Janitor
join:2000-11-17
fishing
·EarthLink

Host:
Earthlink DSL
TekSavvy
Forum Feature Requ..
Need Site Help?
Rants, Raves, and ..

do you think?

With a small amount of the (first ever?) profit they made, Earthlink should rehire some of their former US tech support people. They used to have excellent tech support, by phone, e-mail, and on this site. Since it's all been offshored it's become just a crapshoot.
permalink · 2009-02-09 18:54:49 · Reply to this
hrobins
Premium
join:2000-10-15
Regina, SK
clubs:

Re: do you think?

Fatness, pardon the pun, fat chance for that. When I worked there back around 2000, they called for a team meeting and announced that all dailup support was going to be outsourced. We told the manager that the outsources were not that good and they would cost customers. We were told by the VP of Earthlink, to not say a bad word about the outsourcers. They knew the service sucked, but didn't care it was all about making money.

*The above statement is my views, and my views only, and should be taken as such.
Sorry for the bad English, its 2am here and I haven't been able to sleep for about 26 hours. *
permalink · 2009-02-10 03:19:53 · Print · Reply to this
me1212

join:2008-11-20
Pleasant Hill, MO

What is broadband over powerline?

I read that they invested in it in the article, and wondered what is it?
permalink · 2009-02-09 19:21:50 · Reply to this

indy036

@comcast.net

Re: What is broadband over powerline?

try google bpl
permalink · 2009-02-10 06:57:44 · Reply to this

TMMerlin
The Devil made me do it

join:2003-06-19
Oxford, MI

Oh Goodie

As long as Earthlink still stays in business ..I can keep connecting to Mindspring.com and get my email ...LOL LOL
permalink · 2009-02-10 00:13:42 · Reply to this

Simba7

join:2003-03-24
Billings, MT
·Bresnan Online

1 edit

How many more years will EarthLink survive?

This is one of the bizarre questions. It seems like these ISPs (including AOL) just won't die.

No matter how much the economy has gone to crap, no matter how outdated dialup is, they still lurk around.

I was with OneMain.com for awhile, before that they were MCN here in Montana. They were *GOOD* for an ISP.

..then came EarthLink.. and as usual, it went to sh*t.
--
Bresnan 15M/1M|Mine[P4HT 3.2GHz,2GB RAM,2x1TB HDDs,WinXP]|Wife's[P4 2.4GHz,1GB RAM,60GB HDD,WinXP]|Router[2xP3@1GHz,640MB RAM,18GB HDD,Allied Telesyn AT-2560FX,Kingston KNE100TX,2xDigital DE504,Compaq NC3131,iPro/1000DP,Blitz BWI715,Gentoo]
permalink · 2009-02-10 02:29:30 · Print · Reply to this

fatmanskinny
Premium
join:2004-01-04
Wandering
·Comcast Digital Vo..
·Comcast

Re: How many more years will EarthLink survive?

At this point, I hope they don't die. They still employ hundreds of people who need those paychecks to take care of their families.

Months ago, I would be screaming "Die, EarthLink, Die!" as a former employee and customer of EarthLink's. Now the landscape has changed and I hope they make it through these tough times.
--
Satan is always busy. He makes bad things look good and good things look bad! Watch that Devil.
permalink · 2009-02-10 09:13:59 · Reply to this
hrobins
Premium
join:2000-10-15
Regina, SK
clubs:

Re: How many more years will EarthLink survive?

Fatmanskinny, last I heard there wasn't that many people left at HQ. You remember the noc at the old mindspring building? They fired most of the noc staff and outsourced that, they have outsourced just about everything they can.
permalink · 2009-02-10 11:03:25 · Reply to this

fatmanskinny
Premium
join:2004-01-04
Wandering
·Comcast Digital Vo..
·Comcast

Re: How many more years will EarthLink survive?

Wait, how do outsource a NOC? I thought most of their systems are within the old NOC building down the street on Peachtree Street, no?

I know quite a few guys from the NOC are gone but I didn't know they just about completely dismantled it.
--
Satan is always busy. He makes bad things look good and good things look bad! Watch that Devil.
permalink · 2009-02-10 12:04:45 · Reply to this
hrobins
Premium
join:2000-10-15
Regina, SK
clubs:

Re: How many more years will EarthLink survive?

Yea most of the systems were at the old Mindspring building, a friend of mine that did some contract work for Earthlink told me that they outsourced it. They may have the equipment, but the actuall support people don't work for Earthlink. Don't ask me how or why.
permalink · 2009-02-10 14:13:36 · Reply to this

cameronsfx

join:2009-01-08
Pensacola, FL		 AOL would be dead if not for the stupid that "can't lose my aol email addy" and "the Internet is AOL." People love AOL to keep for chatting.
permalink · 2009-02-10 11:52:51 · Reply to this

A widget

@airtelbroadband.in

NOC - OUT

yes, its out, and they ( outsourced NOC ) do a neat job at it, although some Original noc guys still remain, After all you cant fly >15000 kms evrytime to hardboot a server.

However everyone feels the hurt when anyone looses a job. I hope all of us have one.
permalink · 2009-02-22 17:13:01 · Reply to this
Forums » Earthlink Lives. Sort Of.

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