AOL Tells Customers to Find New Carrier

AP via Yahoo ^ | Thu Nov 11, 8:43 PM ET | AP

[KneelBeforeZod]

DULLES, Va. - America Online, which earlier this year stopped signing up new broadband customers, is telling existing broadband subscribers in nine Southern states that they must find a new broadband carrier by Jan. 17.

Those customers who do not switch to a new broadband carrier by that date will have their accounts revert to AOL's traditional dialup service, said AOL spokeswoman Anne Bentley.

The company has been e-mailing its customers in those nine states that they can switch to high-speed broadband service offered by BellSouth Corp. for a special promotional rate.

Most of AOL's 23 million subscribers receive standard dialup service for $24 a month. The company will not disclose how many customers still receive the $54 monthly broadband service, which Bentley acknowledged is relatively expensive compared to other broadband pricing packages now available to consumers.

Bentley said she expects AOL will phase out existing broadband customers in the rest of the country in a similar manner over the next year.

The affected states are Florida, Kentucky, Georgia, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina.

America Online is a unit of Time Warner Inc.

[Ff--150]

kj

[DB]

Why does anyone pay more for less???

Amazing.

[woofer]

Why does anyone pay more for less???

Amazingly enough, DB, there are tons of suckers, er I mean subscribers out there that actually think AOL is the internet.

That is truly amazing.

[PilloryHillary]

AOL sucks.

[TomGuy]

Ironically, AOL has been running some ads for their broadband on TV recently.

[WomanofStandard]

This doesn't make any sense at all. Why in the world would they stop offering broadband service and go back to the archaic dial up? That's like deciding to go back to non-remote controlled dial televisions.

[Prospero]

Exactly. Is AOL backing away from Broadband? That's a death knell, and an admission that their ever turning turnover in low-end subscribers is has always been their real source of actual revenue.

What a feeling of betrayal so many people feel when they discover the "content" in the AOHell Universe has never been able to keep up with the "outside AOL" authentic Web.

That a hopped up Bulletin Board could maintain the illusion of "putting the Internet at your fingertips" any better than a solid network connection may go down in history as the biggest scam of all time... bigger than the UN for Food Scandal?