Monday, February 03, 2003

WSJ.com - America Online Faces Threat From Cheap Dial-Up Services

WSJ.com - America Online Faces Threat From Cheap Dial-Up Services "America Online, fighting to stem plunging profits and management turmoil, is now facing a looming price war that threatens to undermine one of the most profitable segments of its Internet-access business.
Much attention has been focused on the AOL Time Warner Inc. unit's failure so far to make significant inroads in the growing market for high-speed Internet-access services known as broadband. But less noticed has been the rise of discount online services that are targeting the Internet behemoth's core base of "dial-up" Internet accounts with some success. ...
But expanding the Internet market appears to be more difficult than it was in the past. According to the UCLA survey, the 29% of Americans who don't use the Internet aren't as wealthy or as educated as those who are already online. Nearly 60% of the non-Internet users have incomes less than $30,000 a year and more than 26% of them haven't completed high school."

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