Vendit,
You ask, What is your take on AOL preparing to give away it's service in Europe?
All I know is what I read, including this CBS MarketWatch piece on Dell's subscription free service bundled with PCs in Britain (http://cbs.marketwatch.com/archive/19990609/news/current/dell.htx?source=blq/yhoo&dist=yhoo).
Off the top of my head, Europe is a bit behind the US in terms of Internet participation and the infrastructure model is a bit different. Users pay for local calls to an ISP, which makes an additional charge for AOL an expensive route to get on line. It's similar to someone accessing AOL from the outside, paying an ISP and AOL. Former AOL subscribers who get cable modems often do this to stay in touch with their chatroom friends. But in Europe, where AOL does not have as large a market share as in the US, there is little incentive to pick AOL with its extra charge over free service. If I were Case & Co (and I'm sure I'm not saying anything they don't already know), I'd drop monthly subscriptions completely, take the fee from the local phone companies and put resources into developing local content to compete on something other than price. After all, AOL knows as well as anyone that the initial stages of opening an area to the Internet are about market share.
Best,
--Steve |
