Earthlink's in a tough spot. They won't be able to share next-gen telco networks, their partnership with Covad goes only as far as that company's ADSL2+ network does, cost cutting is affecting support quality, their Muni-Fi efforts have bottomed out, and their investments in BPL were a waste of money. Like AOL, they're hemorrhaging dial-up customers, but unlike AOL that revenue won't be balanced by becoming an advertising engine.

In an effort to stay afloat, Earthlink has been offshoring their domestic tech support for years, according to employee posts to our forums. Last August the ISP fired 800 employees, then started charging DSL users a $5 "network access charge" to help gain additional revenue. More recently, executives have begun to migrate away from the company, leaving the provider on death watch.

While the company still isn't in particularly good shape, their fourth quarter earnings report shows the company narrowed its quarterly loss slightly thanks to cost-cutting measures. Still, company's earnings show that Earthlink lost $80 million on their municipal projects in 2007. The company is now looking for someone to take the entire network off of their hands, after originally hoping the idea would be the company's saving grace.

We're not sure what hope Earthlink has at this point as a broadband provider in a market where they can't access next-gen incumbent networks, have no substantive alternative way to reach subscribers and offer increasingly poor quality offshored support. If there's a candidate pile for companies that may not make it through 2008 without either imploding or being purchased, Earthlink certainly belongs in it.