With the latest fourth quarter and year-end reports now out from United Online, AOL and EarthLink, the expected trends continue. Dial-up Internet access, like stand-alone long distance before it, throws off cash flow, but less every year. All three leading independent Internet access providers are in the midst of transformation projects, with United Online succeeding most clearly, though it failed to pull off an initial public offering of its Classmates.com unit.All three ISPs essentially are managing their dial-up bases to harvest cash flow and control costs, the standard prescription for managing a declining business, while seeking a new path to growth. That's the same path the independent long distance industry took as well.
Perhaps the best historical analogy is not long distance but paging. Basically, mobile phones replaced pagers, as broadband is supplanting narrowband access. But paging remains a business. It simply isn't as large a business as it once was, and is the province of specialists. That's the ultimate future for dial-up services in the medium term as well.
As this data from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission indicates, paging use and revenues have been declining steadily since 1998. Dial-up will be around for a while, but as a small niche within the broader range of access services.
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