May 5, 2006
Someone is finally "C"ing the light!!
And others aren't!
Back when AOL bought TimeWarner, I was excited that TimeWarnerCable (TWC) would work with AOL to convert all of AOL's dial-up subs to be RoadRunner subs.
Well, that didn't happen. TWC stole customers from AOL, touting how much faster RoadRunner cable modems were than dial-up. All the while, AOL foolishly pushed forward with their dial-up model, and their expensive BroadBand option that was basically BroadBand with an AOL filter (which cost extra - but was required). It took them ~4 years to realize it was a mistake, and decided to make their service free. They firmly believed no subs would leave b/c no one wants to part with their "@aol.com" email address. Ha, what a joke. In Wednesday's First Quarter '06 report they write: "[AOL p. 3]: Revenues declined 7%... due to a 13% decrease in Subscription revenues..."
Fastforward to today - 5 years later, TimeWarnerCable is pushing their VoIP service. They're even touting it as a big revenue driver. In Wednesday's First Quarter '06 report they write: "[TimeWarnerCable p.3]... significant growth in Digital Phone revenues ($108 million)." So what does AOL do? Offer free VoIP, with a real phone number (sorta like Skype-In). I'd provide a link to AOL or TWX's sites with a news release, but I can't find anything. Let me know if you do.
And if you want to talk about competitive positioning among non-sister companies, somehow AOL always finds ways to be a day late and a few million dollars short. In this article they point out that as of last week, AOL has 80 million subs between AIM & ICQ. Skype has 100 million. This doesn't surprise me. For a week I've been trying to register a new AIM screen name for a project I'm working on. There's a bug in their system that won't let me do it - and there's no way to email them to tell them. You have to leave a message in a general message box that they don't respond to.
And this is precious; AOL is partnering with Clearwire to offer wireless broadband.
When is someone at TimeWarner going to get their children to play nicely together? This game of last man standing might be fun for the CEO's, but it's not fun for shareholders or employees.
Labels: commerce, ridiculous, synergy
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