Earthlink Buys OmniSky

sydney writes: "Earthlink has decided to go out and buy the remains of OmniSky's wireless network. According to this story, Earthlink has included these plans under its 'Earthlink Everywhere' initiative. Funny thing is, they even admit the wireless, constant streaming idea isn't going to take off anytime soon. The price of stocks even fell 40 cents. At least though, old OmniSky customers will have an ISP again, for now anyway."

This is not such a bad thing

[bobdylan]

I know that some poeple just don't understand the significance of this action, but it may be just what the community needs. With uncertainty comes doubt, and doubt leads to anger and fear leads to Linux and Lunux is leet.

Good move for Earthlink

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not always a bad thing to go against the grain. As evolution has shown, wires are bad and wireless is good. Yes it won't happen soon, but it will happen. And just like AOL was there when it the internet became popular. Earthlink will have there foot in the wireless door when that becomes mainstream.

Breathing a sigh of relief

[dfeldman]

As a long-time Omnisky customer, this is a very good thing for me. In Omnisky's final weeks, my service went from good to nonexistent. Apparently, routers and other equipment went down and nobody was left to reboot them. Getting through to customer service was next to impossible.

Start-ups are cute, but Internet access should be left to the experienced companies who have half a clue what they are doing (both on the service end and on the profitability end). Earthlink has an excellent track record, and as a sort of a charnel house for the corpses of dead ISPs (like Juno and such), it has a proven track record in providing services and making a profit at the same time.

I hope that Earthlink's abundance of clue will last for a long time and assure us Omnisky users quick, uninterrupted service for many years to come.

df

Big Fishes

[Beowulfto]

The great thing about a soft economy is that the big fishes get bigger and the small fishes get eaten. If you have the money to spend, you can take advantage of some exellent deals right now. Earthlink has the right idea.

no customers? I wonder why...

[cr@ckwhore]

I've been tantilized by the omnisky service ever since I bought my Visor Platinum, but I haven't been able to justify the cost in order to get online with my PDA. If they really want the wireless/PDA industry to take off, they'd be a pioneer in finding a way to offer the service for cheap... as in perhaps $15 per month or something like that. I realize that operating this type of service has a high cost, but I'm sure there are ways a company could bring the service to the market in an attractive manner. Right now, the lack of service area and price aren't attractive.

While I'd like to have wireless access on my PDA, I don't need it. I'm not the only PDA user with this mindset.

If they could make the service affordable, I'd definetely sign up without hesitation. When masses of people are able to sign up for the service, then the industry will boom and the OmniSky service could be the backbone of the industry.

Making It Perfectly Clear...

[darkPHi3er]

Right Now every technology/media major player is pursuing the Dream of "subscription revenues", since it is widely perceived by the B School Crowd that this is the best long term Internet success strategy

Earthlink is NOT buying OmniSky out of altrusim, its buying OmniSky to "lock in" as many revenue streams as possible.

That's why MS wants Stinger (and MSN) to suceed SO badly, that they just pulled Maritz off the Project and put Steve in charge of it. Kinda strange the MS CEO taking direct responsibility for a project, isnt it?

Same reason for the shakeups at AOLTIMEWARNER, and for the recent OpenSource-ish(?) attempts in the Symbian/WAP/wireless crowd...

EVERY company that has a "customer base" wants to convert that base to "subscription" or to "even more subscription" (that's why so many wireless providers are eyeing the Docomo services model with such unabashed avarice in their eyes)

this will spell big trouble for both openess and transparency on the Internet, you'll have a AOL-based content control model that will only get more and more restrictive as time goes by...

this will also crowd marginal players out of the market altogether, as they are forced to spend capital trying to match the Big Guys "service for service, feature for feature"...

it will also lead to more revenue tying between the big companies, as they insist on a cut of each others pass through traffic (seen it all before with the telcos, both globally and nationally), leading to a consolidation of content creators, distributors and technology providers...(in english, 2-5 Global Giant Megalopolies (regulated by a global bureaucracy) who provide the technology and the content to much/most of the developed world). From the OmniSky Website ( http://www.omnisky.com )

Dear Valued OmniSky Customer, Today we announced that OmniSky has agreed to sell its subscriber base and key technology assets to Atlanta-based EarthLink, a leading Internet service provider.

We are very excited about the prospects of this agreement and what it means for you...

...You can look forward to satisfying your need for new features, enhanced functionality, and additional device options in the coming months, all from one company.

(off topic?) Guess we now know that i'm not kharma whoring, since some narrow minded Moderator/writer has mod'd me down twice for having an opinion that disagrees with theirs...let's go for 3 why don't we?..and let's give a big "Thank You" to this same person(s) for tolerance and reason and trying to further the breadth and depth of rational discussion on /. THANKS! for YOUR contribution to the /. Community.

when ***YOU*** are paying $200.00/month for content controlled and regulated connectivity and can't choose your access methods without becoming a "subscription slave" to one of the 2-5 Global Big Media/Content/Access companies, who will "legally" control or own the content on YOUR computer, please remember this post.

Ditto -- the next time you bitch about the quality of discussion on a topic and the quantity of the asci art and 11-year old trolls. Thanks again for your tolerance, reason and understanding.

Cell companies are better placed to offer this

[harangutan]

As someone who used Omnisky for the first year or so of its existence, I have to say that by itself it's uneconomic for both the user and the provider. As Omnisky discovered, you can't find a reasonable price point: charge enough to cover your costs, and hardly anyone will be willing to pay it, because the services are too paltry. Charge what the service is actually worth, and you'll go broke.

Cellular providers are in a better position to offer wireless internet for PDAs than either a stand-alone company or an ISP like Earthlink. Cell providers have to provide most of that infrastructure already. And when 3G service finally rolls out, they'll have to provide pretty much everything. Wireless internet for PDAs will take off at that point: it'll be easier to find, a whole lot faster, and because of bundled savings, a whole lot cheaper.

Buy more clams

[shlong]

I'm too lazy to look up the link, but as we all know, Earthlink is a front for Scientology [xenu.net]. Everyone who thinks of AOL as the evil empire, might want to read up on Scientology.

Not a troll -- 100% true

[MisterBlister]

This is not a troll. Earthlink was started by Sky Dayton with significant funding from Kevin O'Donell. Both of them are high-up in the Scientology religion. Back when Earthlink was smaller and located in Glendale (they later moved to Pasedena), the company was made up of about 90% Scientologists, including Brian Wenger who acted as CTO and used to be the maintainer of the pro-Scientology version of the alt.religion.scientology newsgroup FAQ. If you support Earthlink, you ARE supporting Scientology as prominent Scientologists still hold majority shares of the company. This is why I cancelled my MindSpring account when they were bought up by ELN. AOL may be corporate evil, but Earthlink is corporate evil plus cult-religion evil all in one.