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Comment by huskyr | Hacker News Reader

For those who are wondering why this might be a good investment: AOL still has 2 million (!) dialup subscribers that fork over $20 a month.

http://qz.com/401567/more-than-2-million-american-homes-are-...

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I doubt it was for the subscribers. Look at AOL's recent acquisitions in the last 10 years.

Video: StudioNow, 5Min Media, GoViral, Vidible

News: Weblogs, TechCrunch, The Huffington Post

Marketing: Lightningcast, Third Screen Media, AdTech, Tacoda, Quigo, buy.at, Pictela, gdgt, Adap.tv, Convertro, Gravity

One by AOL sunset Gravity, Pictela, ADTECH, Adap.tv, AdLearn, and Convertro (along with subproducts like Adap.tv Marketplace, and AOL's native data platform) into one product. One by AOL is a HUGE product. http://corp.aol.com/2015/04/14/aol-launches-one-by-aol/

StudioNow had been broken off from AOL and repurchased back by the initial investors two years ago, although AOL still holds a minor stake in StudioNow (at the time). [1]

Disclosure: I used to work for AOL StudioNow.

1: http://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/morning_call/2013/01/st...

I feel like this is a perfect reason why this is a bad investment. Anyone who is still subscribed to AOL dialup is honestly probably a senior citizen or technology-illiterate. AOL is not even marketing their dialup service anymore. These people over time will slowly decline until those 2 million eventually hit zero. In fact, you can clearly see the nearly exponential downward trend right on the article you linked. This makes it a nice amount of basically free money for AOL currently, but an absolutely terrible investment for the future.

A significant number of AOL dialup customers are living in rural areas where broadband is just not available [1].

[1] http://www.psmag.com/nature-and-technology/neighbors-still-u...

With 4G broadband this is going to become irrelevant very quickly.

4G is generally available in rural areas?

Not right now, but is there a reason why it won't be?

Economics of covering the area. If it costs more to cover than they expect to make in any reasonable time frame, especially if it never breaks even when you account in maintenance, then they won't do it.

Yes; Verizon has an offering designed explicitly for rural areas[1], but it's expensive. The linked article is from 2012, and prices have since declined, but the general gist of the service is the same: a big antenna you bolt to your house or a tree and will pull from an existing account-level share plan (if you have one).

[1] http://www.cnet.com/news/verizons-homefusion-now-brings-4g-l...

The last time I lived in a deep rural area (Norton, KS) there wasn't a good cell option. The cell tower that covered the town was flaky at best in terms of reception. So, I guess your mileage may vary applies in that situation?

You still have to be in a 4G coverage zone. I guess we're getting into the definition of "rural." Where I live I have no coverage from any carrier.

People will have better luck with rural telephone companies trying to stay alive then big wireless carriers. Sprint and T-Mobile absolutely suck in coverage area for rural folks.

One example, Steele ND and the surrounding area is served by a small rural telephone company that is laying a lot of fibre (I'm hoping they head North). A 200M plan (no cap) for $45 a month. This is being repeated quite a lot in rural areas with rural cooperatives.

I usually think of where I live as rural due to the distance to a major city (20 miles to Athens, GA), but I do get occasional 4G inside the grocery store. It's more exurban than rural.

Living in the midwest, when you're 10 minutes outside of a major city, you're lucky to get spoty 3G. After 20 minutes you're lucky to get any signal.

If Verizon is trying to expand their wireless offerings into areas where dial-up is currently the only option, then having much more direct marketing access to those dial-up users sounds pretty useful for them.

Yes, an anecdotal example is my parents. They live 45 minutes outside of Columbus, OH and have a Verizon 4G adapter for their desktop. In fact some of the smaller carriers have poor cell/data coverage where they are.

I don't even have cellphone coverage at my house in West Virginia. No voice, no text, no bars. Not with AT$T, Verizon, or Sprint.

Now coverage maps, AT$T says they have 3g but I get no service at my house, Sprint Map is spot on, and Verizon map I haven't compared.

Even if there's good reason to use it, there's no potential for growth. The only way this can go is down. It's pretty much going to be a race to recoup the investment before all these rural areas are covered by cellular (even 2G would be faster than dialup!) or satellite internet becomes cheap enough.

Or (some of them) may simply live in areas where broadband internet is not available. I've only had it at home for about 5 years, prior to that dial-up was my only option.

don't forget though, AOL owns TechCrunch, Engadget, Huffington Post, and a bunch of other crap, and they have a pretty massive ad platform. Id wager that the ad platform is what Verizon is really after here.......and maybe a nice bonus would be controlling huffington post and getting them to stop writing articles about how shitty comcast/verizon/twc are and how net neutrality is a good thing.....but that is just me being a bit speculative

I feel like this is a perfect reason why this "may be" a good investment. These people may be switched to Verizon's wireless internet services.

Selling Depends is a big market, there is a lot more cash from adult diapers to be made.

At a cost of $2000 a sub, that's pretty expensive though.

They're going to rake in that much in people forgetting to cancel their AOL dial-up account.

They do have that, but I suspect this has more to do with ads than those customers. If it was about those customers, Verizon would be paying quite a lot for them.

But they definitely aren't being acquired for that reason.

Their respective headquarters are also right down the road from each other.

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