Most Of AOL Profits From Dial Up Subscribers

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And the forehead smacker of the day is AOL's financial statement. Are there really that many people out there still using dial up?

“AOL returned to growth and generated significant value for shareholders in 2012,” said Tim Armstrong, Chairman and CEO. “AOL has strong momentum entering 2013 and is positioned to continue on our growth path by executing our strategy to build the next generation media and technology company.”
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I bet they still have people who setup auto payments years ago and never canceled them.
 
So long as we allow duopoly's to exist between 1 cable provider and 1 teleco company in every city, county, and state, AOL will still exist because rural communities that make up tens of millions of Americans will never get decent access to the Internet.

The excuse that 25 million rural Americans aren't worth building out the network and temporarily losing massive profits (which will be made up in a couple years if you had them sign 2 year contracts) is intolerable. On the bright side, AOL certainly does thank you.
 
powertower said:
I bet they still have people who setup auto payments years ago and never canceled them.
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^^ This.

People probably are paying them for dial-up while on their own seperate broadband connections. I've seen many users out there that still think they can't access the internet unless they start AOL on their computer while they have their own ISP.

/facepalm
 
AOL had Q4 2012 pre-tax income of $67.1 million and income tax expense of $31.7 million, resulting in an effective tax rate of 47.2%. This compares to an effective tax rate of 57.7% for Q4 2011.
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Ouch.
 
My dad paid for an AOL account (just for email) that continued for a LONG TIME without him actually evening signing through AOL's portal software. He was VERY pissed when I told him he didn't need to pay for the email account, that he could use his browser and there were a lot of free email services.

I think he paid $24.95/month or something...maybe it was $9.95/month recently.
 
my dad pays for aol becuase he doesnt want to lose his aol email
 
Believe it or not, there is land outside of the cities, and people do live there even though there is no high speed internet available. They do have phone lines, though. My parents for example live on a farm, and their only options for internet access are dialup, or going through their wireless phone company. They get a very poor wireless signal out there so it's pretty much a crap shoot going that route, and it's much more expensive.
 
It could cost thousands of dollars per customer to get broadband Internet to a single rural customer. How many years would it take just to recoup the installation costs. A Boy Scout camp in a rural area has multiple subcamps. The newest subcamp has no phone because the phone company was charging upwards of $20,000 to install a phone line. They just used a radio system to call to the administration building if an emergency call needed to be made. They have had an AT&T cell phone at the subcamp for the past 5 or 6 years as they had no cell service before then.

Another Boy Scout camp three hundred miles away in an equally rural area has full high speed broadband (and phones). It is several miles from the camp's main building to the gravel road yet they have broadband. The camp had AOL dial-up, then satellite, and now broadband. Internet is for staff use, not for the Boy Scouts.
 
Skripka said:
Try people living out in the country. Broadband penetration in country red state USA is pretty damn depressing.
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Yep.

Last year we visited some old friends of the wife that live about 20 miles past the middle of nowhere.
Nothing but farms and ranches, and only a 1 lane road the last several miles (at least it was paved).

Dialup is the only way they can access the internet, unless they want to spend a fortune for satellite.
 
And no cell phone access either. They said that is you go into town (about 1/2 mile) some cell phones work. My T-Mobile phone didn't have a signal for the last 20 miles of the drive.
 
my mom still pays $16 a month for AOL ontop of having cable from Time Warner. She needs e-mail from AOL.
 
"AOL’s Subscription Revenue Declines 10%, Equaling Lowest Percentage Decline in 6 Years" Pretty sad that a lower decline is one of their top bullet points.
 
About that Rural Electrification Act of 1936.

It's time for the cell phone and internet and phone companies to all become regulated utility monopoly's. $10/mo Phone, cellphone (unlimited voice data), and internet.... FOR ALL. :eek::rolleyes::cool::p
 
Rahh said:
^^ This.

People probably are paying them for dial-up while on their own seperate broadband connections. I've seen many users out there that still think they can't access the internet unless they start AOL on their computer while they have their own ISP.

/facepalm
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Haha back in 1999, but our college dorm already had Ethernet connections and my roommate still used dial-up for AOL for INSTANT MESSENGING. No one could call in or out when this was happening even though he could use the broadband connection AND use AOL Instant Messenger instead of the dumb AOL software he was using.
 
About 2 years ago, I was shopping for houses within 20 miles of the Microsoft campus. . About half of the houses I looked at that were affordable didn't have high speed Internet access beyond spotty 3g coverage. I ultimately spent about $50k more to get a place closer, so I can have Comcast rape me each month.
 
nutzo said:
Yep.

Last year we visited some old friends of the wife that live about 20 miles past the middle of nowhere.
Nothing but farms and ranches, and only a 1 lane road the last several miles (at least it was paved).

Dialup is the only way they can access the internet, unless they want to spend a fortune for satellite.
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A paved road is the middle of nowhere? Lol. Not here. At least here in SK if there's no DSL or Cable (we have a government owned ISP that does all phones, dsl, and cell. ) there's either a WISP or 3G coverage. Very few people ( yes even in the middle of nowhere) have access to high speed. We can get 5/386k in towns of 100 people here.
 
It's pretty sad that the Telco's can't get on giving the rual community faster internet even though we give them Billions each year.
 
soulman901 said:
It's pretty sad that the Telco's can't get on giving the rual community faster internet even though we give them Billions each year.
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They see no money in it given the in use technological limits .. Kinda like rural electricity pre 1936.
 
I am not a big government guy but the telcos and cable cos are getting out of hand with the price gouging, data caps, and such.

We did it with electricity and phones, the world didn't end. If the telcos want the monoply contracts that they weezle into, then they should be required to deliver a minimum broadband speed to all residences.

Just my opinion.
 
This makes me want to run out and buy AOL stock. Invent in the future with the past.
 
Rahh said:
^^ This.

People probably are paying them for dial-up while on their own seperate broadband connections. I've seen many users out there that still think they can't access the internet unless they start AOL on their computer while they have their own ISP.

/facepalm
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That's my wife's parents. The have broadband Internet with their cable company but are still paying for an AOL account. I tried to explain it to them but they didn't seemed interested.
 
ok....as I understand it [from the discussion anyway] dialup=AOL. If you have to have dialup, then you are an AOL user. If you have no choice but to go with dialup, fine....but why go with AOL? (not sure I understand this, but ok)

The only legit reason to stay with AOL is for the email addy. But I really don't quite get that either.

With so many people still using AOL, what does this say about any degree of likelyhood in moving to any of the newest os's?

Atleast I don't get those cd's in the mail anymore.

Not sure, but does AOL require JAVA?

Just out of curiosity, how often does AOL get hacked?
 
i live in WV and I keep hoping that comcast will continue to expand. that service like 1/4 mile down the street and the only options we have is Dialup, satillite or DSL (3mb down/ 374k up) and they are all terrible.

The problem in rural areas is that even the phone infrastructure is so poor. We have congestion problems on DSL all time and it goes down all the time, like multiple times daily. I barely have cell phone reception here and I do not have data. If they could get consistant 3G, I'd just use my unlimited verizon datalpan and tether.
 
What is really sad is AT&Ts stance towards broadband in rural areas, they just don't offer it. I live less than 5 miles from a town of 20k population and just got DSL about two years ago. My parents live 20 miles from the nearest town with 1500 people, in the middle of a 7000 acre wildlife management area where it is about 1 mile between houses. They are on an independent phone company Brandenburg Telephone Company and they just got 2MB down DSL which was the minimum offered, they could have gotten higher, and they pay about half per month what I do. So how can some small company afford to roll out such high tech services in the middle of nowhere and AT&T can not? The same person who owns the small telco also founded Bluegrass Cellular and brought cell service to rural Ky when the big companies would not. When I was a teen, back before the internet was even available, this company was offering their phone service for about $8 per month while in the next county over AT&T was charging $24 per month for the same service. Seems some people know where they can not only make money but provided needed services while others can only think about making mega profits.
 
xX_Jack_Carver_Xx said:
About that Rural Electrification Act of 1936.

It's time for the cell phone and internet and phone companies to all become regulated utility monopoly's. $10/mo Phone, cellphone (unlimited voice data), and internet.... FOR ALL. :eek::rolleyes::cool::p
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Agreed,or at least get some competition in the ISP market so most people can get broadband.
 
there are still tons of rural areas with no other options than crappy satellite.
 
yelsewshane said:
Why not if your live in a rural area just get satelite ???
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You do realize that the cheapest plan is 10gb a month, most expensive is 25gb a month, and they will throttle you if you try to get too much at any given time. Not to mention the latency. It's a last resort, but it still is typically dialup speeds for everyone but the most light of users.
 
Is Netzero still around? I remember using that back in the late 90s early 2000s... I remember dialing into their servers directly without using their software so I could get around the annoying "always on top" banner that disturbed my 56k gaming.
 
XvMMvX said:
I am not a big government guy but the telcos and cable cos are getting out of hand with the price gouging, data caps, and such.

We did it with electricity and phones, the world didn't end. If the telcos want the monoply contracts that they weezle into, then they should be required to deliver a minimum broadband speed to all residences.

Just my opinion.
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Actually we got raped for phones. Back in the day people were terrified of making long distance calls because of the absurd phone rates AT&T charged. And this was even after things were modernized and a lot closer today than when it was hardwire and mechanical relays.

I also recall in the mid 90's the cable rates were getting silly so the government got in there and passed a bunch of regulation to control the price climb. I remember my brother's cable bill almost doubled in just over a year with this supposed price controlling legislation.

All regulation does is make it easier for companies to know who to pay off and also makes the person to bribe a nearly invisible bureaucrat instead of a public politician.
 
jedijeb said:
What is really sad is AT&Ts stance towards broadband in rural areas, they just don't offer it. I live less than 5 miles from a town of 20k population and just got DSL about two years ago. My parents live 20 miles from the nearest town with 1500 people, in the middle of a 7000 acre wildlife management area where it is about 1 mile between houses. They are on an independent phone company Brandenburg Telephone Company and they just got 2MB down DSL which was the minimum offered, they could have gotten higher, and they pay about half per month what I do. So how can some small company afford to roll out such high tech services in the middle of nowhere and AT&T can not? The same person who owns the small telco also founded Bluegrass Cellular and brought cell service to rural Ky when the big companies would not. When I was a teen, back before the internet was even available, this company was offering their phone service for about $8 per month while in the next county over AT&T was charging $24 per month for the same service. Seems some people know where they can not only make money but provided needed services while others can only think about making mega profits.
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A lot of these small town telcos get a lot of subsidy from the federal government. I can't recall what it is called, but there is a fee on every phone bill to pay into a government fund that subsidizes rural phone service.
 
Liger88 said:
The excuse that 25 million rural Americans aren't worth building out the network and temporarily losing massive profits (which will be made up in a couple years if you had them sign 2 year contracts) is intolerable. On the bright side, AOL certainly does thank you.
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It is not an excuse, it's reality. It makes no sense to spend $50,000 to build out to a community of, say, 50 people when you'll never recoup the costs let alone make a profit. There may be 25 million rural Americans but they are spread out. Most telcos and cable companies are more than happy to work out a deal if you agree to pay for build-out; perhaps rural communities could pool their money together and/or set up an installment plan with the cable co/telephone co to cover the buildout costs.
 
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