EarthLink to cut 900 jobs, close offices

[rodeodance]

Source: ap



EarthLink to cut 900 jobs, close offices

By GREG BLUESTEIN, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 27 minutes ago

ATLANTA - Internet service provider EarthLink Inc. said Tuesday that it would cut 900 jobs — or about half its work force — and close four offices in an effort to reduce operating costs. EarthLink shares climbed 7 percent on the news.
...........

More actions could be announced by the year's end but no more cuts are expected, said Rolla P. Huff, the Atlanta-based company's president and chief executive. As part of the plan, EarthLink also said it will repurchase $200 million of its stock.

"While we see this as an important first step in unlocking the underlying value that we believe is in our company, we are only eight weeks into the process of repositioning EarthLink for the future," he said. "These changes get our cost structure in line, but there is much more to do."

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070828/ap_on_hi_te/earthlink;_ylt=AhKugEUH5nUSyJwoeixo57Ws0NUE

[mcscajun]

1. Hmmm...I'd better look to move to another ISP soon.

This one looks to be going the way of the dodo.

[NastyRiffraff]

2. Me too, and it pains me to do it

To get a live person is hard enough now, and when you do, it's apt to be someone from India, who barely speaks English. Yeah, I know that sounds bad, but it's also frustratinng from this end. ''

Switching ISPs isn't something to do lightly, but I'm waiting to see what happens here.

[rodeodance]

5. i have their service also. i will wait and see

[Xithras]

3. All of the dial-up ISP's are in trouble.

You can now get 128k DSL service for only $10 a month if you have AT&T, which covers a huge swath of the country. That's slow for broadband, but it's double the speed of dialup for the same amount of money, and it doesn't tie up a phone line.

The urban and suburban dialup market is rapidly evaporating, and companies like AOL and Earthlink are in serious trouble because of it. Rural dialup users aren't going anywhere for a while, but there simply aren't enough of them to support all of the ISP's currently in the market at their current size. You're going to see a lot more of these layoffs and consolidations over the next few years. Eventually, wireless Internet will even displace dial up from the rural areas, and these ISP's will go the way of Compuserve and Delphi...they'll be relics of the Internet's history.

When I got my first DSL line in 1997, I was paying $80 a month for a 512k line. At the time, dial-up made sense for people who didn't live on the Internet all the time. Nowadays you can get a 6 Mbit line for less than $25 a month in some areas of the country, and most users are flocking to it. Cable is a pretty good deal too (I'm not as familiar with it).

[mcscajun]

4. I've got DSL from Earthlink now (Used to be Mindspring, which they absorbed)

But I've been looking at Verizon FIOS vs. Optimum Online Cable for some time now; I guess this year is the one I'll finally make the change.

[UTUSN]

6. Whoops, Earthlink also absorbed my previous one. I'll never go to ATT

My antipathy to ATT goes back to the pre-deregulation days. Then SWB went long distance & I thought that was cool. So what happened?--guess who was doing the long distance for SWB?---yaas, it was ATT. So I got rid of SWB and it took me 4-5 months to get rid of ATT. So I was on dial-up with what I thought was a small local company. Then it got taken over by Yahoo and I didn't think that was too bad. But then, guess what!!1----yaas, SWB took over Yahoo. So then somebody told me about a Reader's Digest article listing the 10 best little dial-up companies, and I signed up. That went along for a couple of years, then it sold itself to Earthlink. So now this. Where to go, where to go!!1

[alarimer]

7. They just bought our city wi-fi network

Guess that will be bye-bye soon.

The city spent millions implementing it and then had to sell it because Texas passed a law (on behalf of the big corporations no doubt) that cities could not offer wi-fi services. So they sold it to Earthlink. Yuck. I hated them on dial-up.

[BootinUp]

8. Somehow I knew

Earthlink was on borrowed time.

[CRF450]

9. I think it mostly because people have switched to highspeed cable/DSL

We used to have Earthlink for their dail-up service but not anymore. Now we're using Time Warner Cable highspeed cable internet.