AOL is losing subscribers for the first time in its history

Richard Barry

Because they have to go elsewhere for broadband!

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Business/ap20030131_1451.html

R.

mike65

AOL-Time/Warner just posted losses of $98.7 billion, repeat billion. They cant afford to loose anyone, but cant do BB either it seems...boy is that merger going to be a text book case for tomorrows business students!

Mike.

pork99

Originally posted by Richard Barry
Because they have to go elsewhere for broadband!

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Business/ap20030131_1451.html

R.

Behold your future Eircom!

(if only!)

sceptre

Moving to Business/Economy - more appropriate forum I think.

I did a case study on the merger roughly ten months ago (emphasising the financial parts - the P/E ratios and so on) and some of the problems they've had were pretty obvious even then. Remember that AOL took over Time Warner, not the other way around.

AOl have had real problems translating their old narrowband system to a broadband world. I realise I'm singing the praises of Lawrence Lessig for the second time in two days but he highlighted this a few years ago in his second book. Much of what he foretold has come about, including the failure of at least one primary provider (@home).

The marriage between AOL and TW seemed like a haeven-made match to the Wall Street analysts back in the days when people couldn't see the similarities the Net economy had with 16th century tulips - TW content flowing over Roadrunner cable to AOL consumers equalling crazy money rolling into the corporate coffers. It was a silly merger - AOL were overvalued, TW were undervalued, the merger debt was too high and Steve Case, Richard Parsons and Ted Turner just never got on properly.

b20uvkft6m5xwg

Their "Roadrunner" (www.rr.com) product does quite well though and the service is excellent. Thats what I have in New York. They sell it through the Digital TV package of Time Warner cable (www.twcnyc.com). It costs $107 p/m for about 300 TV channels (w/loads of premium stuff) and the Internet included.


I actually dont know what exact specs are on the service but I was achieving up to 250kbp/s downloading Movies and "stuff" on Kazaa over Christmas:eek: [Hence the need to buy a 120 gb external HDD ]

I've no complaints with the servuce but I agree with your point Pork. And it wont be a day too soon!!


--
Hey Seamus,
we were talking about the whole AOL/TW merger in my "Merger Control" Class before Christmas. I think there was a headline in the Economist that read...

The Worlds biggest financial Merger is now...
The Worlds biggest financial MESS [para]

Richard Barry

Originally posted by sceptre
Moving to Business/Economy - more appropriate forum I think.

The root posting to this thread was moved to the Finance topic from IrelandOffline without the consent of the author.

This is a posting about broadband and the key issue as far as IrelandOffline is concerned is the fall off in subscriber numbers because subscribers had to move from AOL to someone else to get a broadband connection in the US.

Time Warner's financial writeoff of its investment in AOL is secondary. By all means feel free to open a new thread under the finance heading to discuss the financial aspects of the item.

Sceptre seems to have a penchant for moving other people's material to places various.

Grow up Sceptre please. Leave the toy car dashboard in your cot in the attic!

R.

[with apologies to innocent subscribers to the Finance forum]

sceptre

Originally posted by Richard Barry
Sceptre seems to have a penchant for moving other people's material to places various.

Grow up Sceptre please. Leave the toy car dashboard in your cot in the attic!

Pffft. Solution as always if you feel you've been treated unfairly is to PM me - or take it up on the admin board if you feel I'm incapable or an idiot. Dustaz has already explained why threads are sometimes moved/cut/merged/even edited in your reposting so it's unnecessary for me to repeat him. I don't actually have a penchant for moving anything (though I do it when the thread appears to warrant it), I've no idea what you mean by the second paragraph above so I'll just be gracious and ignore it.

AOL don't really have an operation in Ireland - there's a (Dublin) dialup number available as a hangover from the Compuserve days but the only people who are really using it are US travellers. They don't have any plans to move into the Irish market. The link you posted concentrates on the business aspects rather than the tech aspects, tie that to their non-presence here currently (or ever?) and I felt this was the place to put it. The only line in the article that would indicate an IOFFL relevance was the one pork99 had in mind when posting - customers will move to an alternative provider for broadband if their own provider can't or won't provide it. If this was the focus of your posting, you failed to even mention it - it's only a passing reference in the article as opposed to anything mentioned on www.dslreports.com (or here)

Time Warner didn't invest in AOL btw - AOL mounted a friendly takeover of TW based on a 1.8something:1.2 shareswap. AOL could die/disappear in the morning and it wouldn't even affect the Irish market.

Quigs Snr

Well no AOL don't have any presence here on the tech front but they do on the jobs front. Don't forget their call centre for the UK is located here in Waterford and employs several hundred people including many part timers from the WIT.

It's a bad thing if AOL hits the skids.

Victor

[edit]I think the problem is the use of bloated accounting, not necessarily the strict loss in the number of customers. Like too many dotcom companies, too much management effort went into M&A effort of non-core business and not enough into sustainable organic development. That said AOLs predominance in the US domestic market, meant it was only a matter of time before it lost market share.[/edit]

Originally posted by Richard Barry
The root posting to this thread was moved to the Finance topic from IrelandOffline without the consent of the author.

Wahooo. Don't you think this makes you look like a prima donna? Welcome to the benevolent dictatorship that is boards.ie

Originally posted by Richard Barry
This is a posting about broadband

Then post in the broadband forum.

b20uvkft6m5xwg

Victor there is no need to reply to everything.
That last post simply adds nothing to the thread. PM him if you want to discuss the boards.ie dictatorship.

Can we continue on topic please.