
AOL Lays Off Another 100, Two-Thirds in Its Dial-Up/Membership Division - doppp
http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/08/aol-lays-off-another-100-two-thirds-in-its-dial-upmembership-division/
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daguava
Living in the middle of nowhere in a lower middle class family, I can't thank
AOL enough for all the free trials they sent our way. It was my introduction
to tech.

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ctstover
You know dial up deserved a better fate. For me, I realized it was dead for
real about 7 years ago. I setup a US based dial up account as a backup for a
vacation that included some remote places. It did work in a cabin in a cell
signal blocking valley, but not in a hotel - where of course PBXs are all now
VOIP. Irony indeed. Worst of all is that a "real" POTS line cost more than a
cell phone.

Related question: is it still true that if you are willing to pay (was like
$100+/month) local telcos must sell you a ISDN BRI line? Anyone out there in
oh say, the Nevada desert with such a connection? Satellite then? Or are you
just on AOL?

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function_seven
> Related question: is it still true that if you are willing to pay (was like
> $100+/month) local telcos must sell you a ISDN BRI line? Anyone out there in
> oh say, the Nevada desert with such a connection? Satellite then? Or are you
> just on AOL?

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I was curious about this as well. Looks like there is no requirement, although
AT&T will still sell a BRI for $55 a month "anywhere a normal analog line can
be placed"[1]. But Verizon has discontinued it in some parts as well as
CenturyTel.

"Or are you on just AOL?" Ha, you should rephrase that: "Or are you just
AOL?".

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Services_Digital_Ne...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Services_Digital_Network#United_States_and_Canada)

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duskwuff
Q1. AOL still has a dial-up division?

Q2. With enough people that they can lay off ~60 of them as a routine staffing
adjustment??

Q3. What do they do all day??!

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cosmie
>90% of AOL's ~$150mm annual revenue comes from their dialup customers.

They're not really getting new customers, but their average customer lifetime
is 14 years. It's basically elderly people who have had autopay set up for
ages.

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67726e
I wonder what percent is people who can't be bothered to fix it. I've been
telling my mother for the past two years she no longer needs to pay for AOL to
access her AOL email account, yet she does nothing. She pays something like
$20/month for the fucking service.

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MrFoof
The "friction" of changing a habit is enough to keep most people with their
existing habits. Also knows as, 'people don't like change'.

Over the past few years as my parents approached fixed income (with little
savings, they didn't save/invest anything until several years ago), I've been
steering them towards habits that offer savings, without sacrifice (i.e. going
to a different supermarket, changing telco providers, etc.). Keeping the same
things, just lowering the bill. However, my mother is the one who is "in
charge" of these things. A campaign to simply change a service provider takes
about a year. Even if everything is provided for them. The amount of
resistance encountered for her to spend 20 minutes to do something is huge.

After the change, she'll agree it was a great change and even advocate to
others that they should do it too. She'll never admit she should've done it
when first suggested and empirically shown it would offer no degradation but
save money. Yet that friction is very real.

Age isn't a factor either. I know people in their late 20s and mid-30s who do
exactly the same thing. People don't like change, and the friction of having
to do anything is enough to result in people doing nothing.

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deadowl
Is this Facebook's future? After all, they're pretty much AOL 2.0 (2.0).

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mcbutterbunz
I wasn't aware that Facebook offered dial up service.

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terinjokes
No, just the Facebook keywords.

