ACT II...
Bittersweet announcement for me today from Time Warner (via the Wall Street Journal) regarding it's America Online (AOL) subsidiary:
"The Dulles, Va.-based company, which noted the America Online moniker is retiring after 15 years..."
"Time Warner Inc. unit America Online said that it has officially changed its name to AOL.
"Our company long ago accomplished the mission implied by our old name.
We literally got America online," said Jon Miller, chairman and chief executive of AOL, in a prepared statement."
True that, Jon.
Although not the first consumer online service, America Online, was the first to take consumer online services mainstream, via monthly, flat-priced, dial-up service.
Kudos to Steve Case and the team. It's been some ride.
Apparently, the logo transitions as well, from left to right.
It got me thinking about what is the next big challenge in consumer online services, whether in the US or abroad?
Certainly, the transition of mainstream consumers from dial-up to broadband is a continuing trend.
But that's not enough. There's something else potentially.
Coincidentally, the answer likely comes from Pipex, a long-time UK Internet Service Provider (ISP). Ironically, Pipex was once a part of UUNET, the company that enabled not just America Online, but also Microsoft's MSN and Earthlink, to provide nation-wide, flat-priced, dial-up online services.
From The UK Register, comes this story with the headline:
"UK ISP Pipex is hooking up with Intel to launch a wireless broadband service in the UK's major metropolitan areas, starting with London and Manchester.
Pipex is already running trials of its WiMAX service with Airspan Networks at the US-based firm's test facility in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Now it's launched a joint venture with Intel Capital - the chip maker's venture capital VC outfit - to create Pipex Wireless.
As apart of the deal, Pipex has transferred its entire 3.6GHz UK spectrum license to the new wireless business."
I've been giving this some thought for sometime now.
Maybe what Pipex is planning to do in the UK, is the next, big grand opportunity for somebody in the US as well:
A nation-wide, non-cellular, broadband wireless consumer online service that charges mainstream, flat, monthly access fees.
By mainstream, I mean something less than the $60 per month add-on, "unlimited" data packages charged by the cellular providers like Verizon Wireless, Sprint et al, for their EV-DO and other flavors of cellular-based wireless broadband services.
This of course, would mean competing head-on with the metered cellular industry, much in the way the old America Online took on the metered consumer online service pioneers CompuServe and Prodigy.
Now that'd be a worthy mission for the new AOL.
But we'd need a "wireless UUNET" first potentially, to provide the nation-wide, non-cellular, broadband, wireless infrastructure.
Any takers besides potentially Google and MetroFi?
Can history repeat itself?
(Disclosure: I was the lead equity research analyst covering UUNET on it's IPO in 1995, and CompuServe in 1996. I also covered America Online from 1995 through it's merger with Time Warner in 2000).
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