By Robert Luhn
(1/23/03)
A tale of broadband access, AOL style
It was a "chick flick" kind of night--dark and stormy outside, and I had a bowl of popcorn on one side and a comatose cat on the other. I popped in a tape of the Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan film, You've Got Mail, and settled in for a good sniffle. And then I had my first unexpected belly laugh.
As you may recall, Hanks and Ryan carry on an online romance over AOL (circa 1998). Early in the movie, Hanks dials up to check his mail and is instantly connected. Via modem. To AOL. Ha! As most faithful (and frustrated) AOL users know, connecting to the service, much less at 56Kbps, has long been a hit-or-miss affair. Was the movie clueless? Or was it simply a prescient promo for AOL's future broadband service? Thanks to AOL's new broadband offerings, you can log on and surf as quickly as the characters in You've Got Mail. The question is, why would you?
Too much, too late?
Here's one reason AOL hopes you might tune in: its warehouse of multimedia content. Instead of using AOL just for e-mail (do I see a few million raised hands?), broadband access lets you tap a sizable online jukebox, watch music videos and long concerts, play interactive games, and more. AOL really is better with broadband. "It all comes down to content," says Chris Neal, research director at Sage Research. "We surveyed 600 mainstream households and found that their No. 1 reason for picking broadband was entertainment. That's something AOL Time Warner can deliver in spades."
AOL pushes, and has had its greatest success with, its "bring your own access" broadband choices, wherein you can get AOL service, content, and software for a monthly fee on top of your own DSL or cable access. But the company has also entered the fray with its own AOL Broadband service. AOL's broadband offerings are pricey ($50 and up per month compared to around $40 for DSL and even less for cable access), and they're sometimes hard to get, also, they lack extras--hallmarks of a typical AOL rollout. (See my similar take on AOL's Small Business service.) At least AOL has an excuse for charging more: it doesn't have its own broadband infrastructure. Faced with a massive hardware upgrade or buying up cable companies, AOL instead cut deals with core broadband providers such as AT&T Comcast (cable) and SBC (DSL).
What you get
So, what does your $31.50 per month (plus your standard monthly fee of $19.95 to $23.90) buy? A kit (modem, software, USB, and Ethernet cables--and if you get DSL, line filters), a 30- or 45-day free trial (in some areas), seven screen aliases, and downstream/upstream speeds approaching 1.5Mbps/128Kbps. That's it. No extra e-mail accounts, Web space, or other premium goodies à la the SBC Yahoo DSL service.
That's assuming you can sign up at all. Go to Keyword: Broadband and sign up for DSL, and you may be told yes initially, then be told no a day or two later. Why the internal debate? AOL has different distance requirements than SBC, which provides the service in some areas, including mine. AOL says that I'm 160 feet too far from the phone company's central office (CO), so it can't hook me up, yet SBC easily provisioned my line for its own DSL service several months ago. Can I get AOL's Time Warner cable offering? Well, no, because AT&T owns the cable market in my area and sells its own service, not AOL's--at least not yet.
Still, setting up AOL Broadband is pretty simple, if you can get it. Sign up online, and if you truly qualify, your line will be provisioned within two weeks. Before then, a neatly packaged, thoroughly labeled and illustrated self-install kit arrives at your doorstep (you can't get installation service, however). Pop in the disc, and you're carefully taken through every step, from connecting the modem to checking the line. AOL's documentation is superb--lucid, illustrated, without any wrong turns--and the on-disc help system is just as good. At least in this area, AOL has set a new standard.
The gotchas? When you get broadband from AOL, you can access it only with the AOL software up and running; you can't just fire up Internet Explorer and go surfing. Second, you must be an annual or unlimited monthly AOL subscriber. And if you're a BellSouth customer, be prepared to pay a $110 activation fee. Ouch.
AOL: to infinity and beyond!
The good news is that AOL's entry into the broadband market could unify pricing and force providers to get their act together. If AOL ends up being the source of broadband for 35 million users, you can bet that all those partner companies serving up that access will have to snap to.
The bad news, says Davis, is that true consumers, whom he calls "the people who use CD-ROM trays as cup holders," aren't very tech savvy. Connecting a modem to your phone line is pretty easy; wrestling with a broadband self-install kit and dealing with indoor and outdoor line hassles is another. Bottom line: Support calls could skyrocket.
AOL is also accustomed to totally controlling its access technology--something it can't do with partners such as AT&T and SBC. Will AOL be able to manage all the DSL and cable providers, shave install times, avoid billing snafus, handle customer complaints, and otherwise make broadband a sane experience? To quote the old cliché, only time will tell.
It was a "chick flick" kind of night--dark and stormy outside, and I had a bowl of popcorn on one side and a comatose cat on the other. I popped in a tape of the Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan film, You've Got Mail, and settled in for a good sniffle. And then I had my first unexpected belly laugh.
As you may recall, Hanks and Ryan carry on an online romance over AOL (circa 1998). Early in the movie, Hanks dials up to check his mail and is instantly connected. Via modem. To AOL. Ha! As most faithful (and frustrated) AOL users know, connecting to the service, much less at 56Kbps, has long been a hit-or-miss affair. Was the movie clueless? Or was it simply a prescient promo for AOL's future broadband service? Thanks to AOL's new broadband offerings, you can log on and surf as quickly as the characters in You've Got Mail. The question is, why would you?
Too much, too late?
Here's one reason AOL hopes you might tune in: its warehouse of multimedia content. Instead of using AOL just for e-mail (do I see a few million raised hands?), broadband access lets you tap a sizable online jukebox, watch music videos and long concerts, play interactive games, and more. AOL really is better with broadband. "It all comes down to content," says Chris Neal, research director at Sage Research. "We surveyed 600 mainstream households and found that their No. 1 reason for picking broadband was entertainment. That's something AOL Time Warner can deliver in spades."
AOL pushes, and has had its greatest success with, its "bring your own access" broadband choices, wherein you can get AOL service, content, and software for a monthly fee on top of your own DSL or cable access. But the company has also entered the fray with its own AOL Broadband service. AOL's broadband offerings are pricey ($50 and up per month compared to around $40 for DSL and even less for cable access), and they're sometimes hard to get, also, they lack extras--hallmarks of a typical AOL rollout. (See my similar take on AOL's Small Business service.) At least AOL has an excuse for charging more: it doesn't have its own broadband infrastructure. Faced with a massive hardware upgrade or buying up cable companies, AOL instead cut deals with core broadband providers such as AT&T Comcast (cable) and SBC (DSL).
What you get
So, what does your $31.50 per month (plus your standard monthly fee of $19.95 to $23.90) buy? A kit (modem, software, USB, and Ethernet cables--and if you get DSL, line filters), a 30- or 45-day free trial (in some areas), seven screen aliases, and downstream/upstream speeds approaching 1.5Mbps/128Kbps. That's it. No extra e-mail accounts, Web space, or other premium goodies à la the SBC Yahoo DSL service.
That's assuming you can sign up at all. Go to Keyword: Broadband and sign up for DSL, and you may be told yes initially, then be told no a day or two later. Why the internal debate? AOL has different distance requirements than SBC, which provides the service in some areas, including mine. AOL says that I'm 160 feet too far from the phone company's central office (CO), so it can't hook me up, yet SBC easily provisioned my line for its own DSL service several months ago. Can I get AOL's Time Warner cable offering? Well, no, because AT&T owns the cable market in my area and sells its own service, not AOL's--at least not yet.
Still, setting up AOL Broadband is pretty simple, if you can get it. Sign up online, and if you truly qualify, your line will be provisioned within two weeks. Before then, a neatly packaged, thoroughly labeled and illustrated self-install kit arrives at your doorstep (you can't get installation service, however). Pop in the disc, and you're carefully taken through every step, from connecting the modem to checking the line. AOL's documentation is superb--lucid, illustrated, without any wrong turns--and the on-disc help system is just as good. At least in this area, AOL has set a new standard.
The gotchas? When you get broadband from AOL, you can access it only with the AOL software up and running; you can't just fire up Internet Explorer and go surfing. Second, you must be an annual or unlimited monthly AOL subscriber. And if you're a BellSouth customer, be prepared to pay a $110 activation fee. Ouch.
AOL: to infinity and beyond!
The good news is that AOL's entry into the broadband market could unify pricing and force providers to get their act together. If AOL ends up being the source of broadband for 35 million users, you can bet that all those partner companies serving up that access will have to snap to.
The bad news, says Davis, is that true consumers, whom he calls "the people who use CD-ROM trays as cup holders," aren't very tech savvy. Connecting a modem to your phone line is pretty easy; wrestling with a broadband self-install kit and dealing with indoor and outdoor line hassles is another. Bottom line: Support calls could skyrocket.
AOL is also accustomed to totally controlling its access technology--something it can't do with partners such as AT&T and SBC. Will AOL be able to manage all the DSL and cable providers, shave install times, avoid billing snafus, handle customer complaints, and otherwise make broadband a sane experience? To quote the old cliché, only time will tell.
 |
AOL Q&A: ZIP zapped |
 | |
| |
Whenever I send e-mail with multiple attachments, AOL seems to put them in a ZIP file. Once the e-mail is sent, is the ZIP file erased? If not, can I erase it? And where's it hiding, anyway?
--Sara in Oxnard
Dear Sara:
No, yes, and in a special place. Why doesn't AOL erase this file when the upload is complete? The company wouldn't say--it just doesn't. (Programs such as Windows Disk Cleanup don't purge these files, either.) Deleting the ZIP file once the upload is done, however, won't hurt a fly. Fire up Windows Explorer, peek into the \America Online x.x\misc\temp folder, and erase any ZIP files you find. Note: AOL doesn't zip single file attachments, so you won't find any left in this folder.
Reader alert: Have you cancelled your AOL account but can't stop AOL from siphoning funds from your credit card or bank account? Send me your story (rluhn@aol.com), and I'll report on what AOL is--and isn't--doing to resolve this problem.
Robert Luhn is a former executive editor for CNET.com and a frequent contributor to CNET Reviews. He's currently downloading AOL 8.0 via his 9,600bps modem. Have a question for him? We'll pass it on!
