• by Masha Geller , May 13, 2003

AOL should follow the lead of Yahoo and MSN and get out of the dial-up doldrums. A little less than a year ago, Yahoo! signed a co-branded DSL deal with SBC Communications, which has since attracted nearly 1 million subscribers.

Today, MSN went a little further, by signing an agreement to bundle MSN 8 with Verizon's DSL package. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Verizon Online DSL with MSN 8 will be offered over all of Verizon's 36 million DSL-capable access lines.

As a point of reference, according to eMarketer, broadband will be in 22% of US homes this year (57 million,) rising to 154 million households (32.2%) by 2005.

But that's simple broadband. The MSN deal goes a lot further. New York City Verizon DSL subscribers will also have access to a Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) network Verizon launched today, providing customers with wireless Internet access on high-speed networks throughout the City. Wi-Fi is a high-speed wireless web connection available to laptops with Wi-Fi cards from wireless access points ("hot spots.")

Verizon said it has already activated 150 Wi-Fi access points or "hot spots" in the New York and plans to activate 850 more by the end of the year. The company said it would evaluate offering the service in its other markets along the East Coast as well as Texas and Hawaii.

Gartner Dataquest estimates only 10% of mobile PCs have a Wi-Fi capability as of 2002, but nearly 70% will be enabled by 2007.

I'm not a tech geek, but in light of all this, AOL via dial-up just seems so last century!