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Posts Tagged “

Earthlink

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Virgin Mobile bails out Helio Virgin Mobile will acquire failed mobile virtual network operator Helio for $39 million in equity and, if the last two years are a trend, much more in costs. Founded as a joint venture between Earthlink and SK Telecom, Helio burned through $560 million in its first two years. [PaidContent]

2 comments

Wi-Fi

Philadelphia's Wi-Fi network saved, for now, but the time for citywide wireless has past

After EarthLink abandoned a citywide Wi-Fi project for Philadelphia after only 6,000 customers signed up for the $20/mo. service. Now local investors Derek Pew of Boathouse Communications and Mark Rupp, a former Verizon executive, are planning to take over the network, which will be free and ad-supported. When first announced, the project was on of the largest Wi-Fi buildouts proposed. But after being completed, few users signed up because it was slow, didn't reach far into the city's signature row houses if at all, and was not much cheaper than adding Internet to your cable or phone connection. Earthlink had previously attempted to hand the network off an Ohio-based non-profit. But Wi-Fi was never a particularly good technology for these projects, and it's high time to abandon the pipe dream. More »

Feature

5:00 PM on Tue Jun 17 2008
By Jackson West
706 views, 3 comments

Latest by n/a: The key to designing successful ad supported wi-fi models is to ensure adequate inventory availability that is aligned with advertiser needs. I agree that ³landing page² or ³ads for access² models will never produce meaningful revenues ­ but companies like ours more »

EarthLink tries to unwireless Philadelphia No one wants EarthLink's Philadelphia Wi-Fi network, first announced four years ago — not the city, not a nonprofit. EarthLink has filed a federal lawsuit to remove its equipment from street lights and limit its liability to $1 million; it plans to shut down the network on June 12. [CNBC]

3 comments

media

"Google Me" documentary an irony-free, feel-good flick with literal cult appeal

Jim Killeen, former bit-actor and current small businessman, decided to turn the typical act of searching for other people with his same name on Google into the premise for a documentary — Google Me. He tracked down a number of other Jim Killeens around the world, from Australia to Ireland, and spent some time to get to know them and ask them a few questions. The result is an hour and a half of "gee whiz" encounters and white male bonding. See Jim meet Jim! And Jim! And Jim! See Jim get grossed out by vegemite and haggis! See Jim uncomfortable as the particulars of a swingers party are explained! You can watch it all for free on YouTube. But what was the most interesting thing about the film? More »

Feature

10:00 AM on Sun Apr 27 2008
By Jackson West
1,991 views, 10 comments

Latest by n/a: About 15 years ago, filmmaker David Berliner's "The Sweetest Sound" had a similar conceit. He tracked down anyone he could find with his name via phonebook, newspaper ads and however else people used to search for each other during those more »

rolla huff

EarthLink's choice: just fade away

Rolla Huff, the CEO of Internet service provider EarthLink, has made a choice many in Silicon Valley find incomprehensible: He's no longer bothering to get new customers. Here, the moment you stop growing — no, the very second your momentum falters — you're instantly written off. But the reason why EarthLink swung to a $54 million profit in its first quarter was simple. Its new dial-up customers — yes, people are still signing up for dial-up — simply weren't worth its while, and EarthLink stopped spending money to market service to them. Huff has also pulled the company out of the municipal Wi-Fi market, selling some networks to city governments and shuttering others. He's similarly disentangling the company from its Helio cell-phone joint venture, a half-billion-dollar fiasco. All of that doesn't leave EarthLink with much of a future. More »

1:00 PM on Thu Apr 24 2008
By Owen Thomas
939 views, 5 comments

Latest by Troll_2.0: Huff! more »

san francisco

Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive brings broadband to SF housing projects

Mayor Gavin Newsom's office tried to garner good press by selling his efforts to bring free Wi-Fi to San Francisco as an effort to bring broadband to the poor, under the auspices of Project Tech Connect. Commercial partners Google and EarthLink just wanted to sell location-targeted ads with a franchise agreement to shut out competitors. Now Brewster Kahle's nonprofit Internet Archive has done what Newsom, Google and EarthLink couldn't. No, not hold yet another press conference. Kahle actually brought 100-megabit-per-second broadband to low-income households. More »

3:00 PM on Fri Mar 28 2008
By Jackson West
1,520 views, 21 comments

Latest by n/a: Owen: Why are you banning Johndmc? Kompression posted a violent threat. His second that I have seen. The other guy said something reasonable and even quoted Truman. Why? more »

high finance

Monster, Palm and three other tech companies own $856 million in paper no one wants to buy

Instead of holding onto cash, tech firms such as Monster, Palm, Intuit, EarthLink and MetroPCS in recent years bought something called auction-rate securities. Basically — very basically — that means these companies loaned out around $856 million because banks told them they'd earn more than they would just holding on to the cash. Only thing is now, with the credit markets being what they are — crappy — no one else wants to buy the rights to collect on those loans. So all that cash is sewn up in paper. That could soon hurt because the companies are going to need that cash eventually, an exec at one Wall Street trading firm told the WSJ. And when they do, he said, they should expect "a steep loss."

7:00 AM on Fri Mar 28 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
1,550 views, 11 comments

Latest by matto: @OaklandTechie: Don't be a hater! Would you like more Naked Jesus jpegs? more »

stocks

Goldman Sachs is now 10 percent less impressed with Internet

Citing a more challenging consumer environment, greater customer-acquisition costs and investor reluctance to pay above-market prices for shares, Goldman Sachs today cut price targets for Internet stocks including Google, eBay, and Amazon by 10 percent. For more reasons why Wall Street is suddenly less impressed with your tech stock portfolio, see Goldman's entire report, embedded here: More »

9:20 AM on Thu Mar 20 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
558 views, 2 comments

exclusive

CFO and three VPs depart Helio, chairman to follow

Helio CFO Todd Tappin and execs Michael Zemetra, Terry Boyle and Kieran Hannon will leave the company by March 31. A source tells us former CEO and current chairman Sky Dayton won't remain long, either. The cell-phone carrier started as a joint venture in 2006 between EarthLink, the Internet service provider founded by Dayton, and South Korean phone company SK Telecom. Since then, it has disappointed, and EarthLink ran short on cash to invest. When SK Telecom reupped with another $270 million last fall, reducing EarthLink's share to 22 percent, this kind of shakeout was expected. In fact, our source tells us most if not all executives from the "EarthLink side of the house" will depart the company on or before March 31.

2:10 PM on Tue Feb 12 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
1,191 views, 21 comments

Latest by search.scientist: @justinsane: how does that foot in your mouth taste? more »

wi-fi

EarthLink bails out of providing Wi-Fi to dirty hippies -- and everyone else

San Franciscans may remember EarthLink CEO Rolla Huff leaving them in the lurch when he abruptly backed out of the city's municipal Wi-Fi project. Well, it turns out Huff, like any sensible CEO, doesn't want to lose money on a venture that probably will minimize shareholder value. The Internet service provider is cutting its losses and abandoning all plans to build citywide Wi-Fi networks. A shame. We thought it was just San Francisco's toxic stew of entitlement, anticapitalism, and government dysfunction that drove EarthLink away.

1:46 PM on Tue Nov 20 2007
By Mary Jane Irwin
231 views, 1 comment

Latest by 0x6772: As it happens, I've actually been paying EarthLink for wifi in Philadelphia. It simply doesn't work. Ever. I haven't canceled yet because there'd been a few news articles suggesting that they acknowledged that there were problems and were planning to more »

social networks

Sky Dayton just wants to be your friend

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. — Could it be that Sky Dayton is feeling a little lonely? EarthLink, the company he founded, refused to participate in the latest round of financing for Helio, the upstart wireless carrier he now heads. In a keynote speech at Technology Review's EmTech conference, he touted his company's service not as, say, letting you make calls and surf the Web, but "connecting you to your community of friends." So it's a social network! Ah, but a social network that requires buying a phone (as much as $295) and signing up for service ($85 to $90 a month, on average). No wonder Dayton's ersatz social network, cleverly disguised as a cell-phone company, only counts 140,000 users, and is losing hundreds of millions of dollars. Somehow I don't think Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is sweating over this one.

6:14 AM on Thu Sep 27 2007
By Owen Thomas
331 views, 1 comment

Latest by ResearchZilla: you know, i'm also really upset by how his company markets to teens - the pricing is ridiculous in the states and no teen (working or not) can touch their package pricing offerings (text, im, web and phone)...worse than even more »

Sky Dayton's wireless company, Helio, as rumored, is getting new funding without help from co-owner EarthLink, an Internet service provider facing financial straits. Joint-venture partner SK Telecom is investing $270 million in Helio and renegotiating its agreement with EarthLink. [Reuters]

3 comments

san francisco

Sonic.net tries mob rule for municipal Wi-Fi

With San Francisco's municipal Wi-Fi program stuck in purgatory thanks to EarthLink's budget concerns, Internet service provider Sonic.net aims to be the city's wireless savior. Not that legions of dirty hippy leechers deserve free Wi-Fi. Nonetheless, Sonic says customers can obtain a subsidized wireless mesh router and hook it up to a DSL line. Why? To create a network of wireless access points. Web surfers browsing from the wireless network will be served Google ads to subsidize their surfing. Sonic will implement a profit-sharing plan that will credit their customers' accounts. Sounds like both a cheap attempt to turn EarthLink's woes into free PR, and a blatant ripoff of Fon's business model. More power to Sonic. A plan so crass can't help but work.

2:04 PM on Tue Sep 4 2007
By Mary Jane Irwin
267 views, 2 comments

Latest by dickster: Good. Sonic rocks the hizzie! In all honesty, I'd rather have a sharp stick in the eye than the Google/Earthlink plan. more »

rumormonger

Does Sky Dayton need a new sugar daddy?

Helio, Sky Dayton's wireless-service provider, is cutting back, laying off one out of seven employees, mostly in sales. It's now concentrating efforts, the company says, on its 20 largest markets. The company only has 100,000 subscribers, and 600 employees even after the cutbacks, and is expected to lose more than $300 million this year. EarthLink, the troubled Internet service provider founded by Dayton that's one of Helio's two backers, is rumored to be looking to pull out. More »

12:32 PM on Fri Aug 31 2007
By Owen Thomas
764 views, Comment

wireless

EarthLink drops the San Francisco Wi-Fi project

Following yesterday's daily dose of EarthLink doom — the Internet service providerlaid off 900 employees, including municipal Wi-Fi networks president Don Berryman — the copmany has decided San Franciscans aren't worthy of free Internet after all. CEO Rolla Huff called up god-mayor Gavin Newsom to say, as a Newsom spokesman put it, "they were not going to be able to fulfill their end of the bargain." The mayor's office says it's still committed to blanketing San Francisco with Wi-Fi, and is counting on Google to remain an "anchor" while the city shops for more vendors. Newsom is also placing a measure on November's ballot asking to use public and private funds to get the network of the ground. Good luck with getting free Wi-Fi, you dirty hippies. As we've said, you don't deserve it.

10:58 AM on Thu Aug 30 2007
By Mary Jane Irwin
468 views, 2 comments

Latest by phil_collins: Duhhhh. Notice how every single one of these citywide wifi projects never really happened? I'm sitting in a hotel right now and I've got a shitty, barely working connection and there are 3 wireless routers here. It's a fucking scam by more »

cutbacks

EarthLink puts more than San Francisco's Wi-Fi network on hold

Earlier this month, Internet service provider EarthLink held San Francisco's proposed citywide Wi-Fi network hostage while asking the city to pony up some extra cash. Turns out that wasn't strong-arm tactics — EarthLink is in a world of financial hurt. To cauterize the bleeding, it's cutting 900 employees. Among the victims is Don Berryman, the president of municipal Wi-Fi networks. EarthLink won't be filling the position.

9:27 AM on Wed Aug 29 2007
By Mary Jane Irwin
230 views, Comment

google

No free Wi-Fi for you dirty San Francisco hippies

Google blunderkind Chris Sacca's plans for world domination are currently on hold. EarthLink, Google's partner in building a citywide Wi-Fi network in San Francisco, has delayed city officials' vote on the project's contract, until September, if ever. EarthLink CEO Rolla Huff is earning his last name by giving San Francisco the silent treatment. Not only has it stonewalled the city's proposal for a shortened contract and improved speed and security settings, but EarthLink now wants San Francisco to foot the bill. "The Wi-Fi business as currently constituted will not provide an acceptable return," Huff told Dow Jones. "We're going to look for municipal governments to step up and become a meaningful anchor tenant." Translation: Pony up! Of course, it has to be said: San Franciscans richly deserve this. The way we're behaving, there's no way we deserve free Wi-Fi. No wonder Chris Sacca and his partners are taking their squishy exercise balls and going home.

4:05 PM on Mon Aug 6 2007
By Mary Jane Irwin
1,397 views, 5 comments

Latest by n/a: As FSJ would say, Freetards! more »

san francisco

Crazy San Franciscans are fighting free Google wifi

Say what you want about the Google hegemony, I'd trust them before San Franciscan landlords and neighborhood overlords any day. Reader Davis Freeberg saw San Francisco nutjobs shanghai a town meeting with Google and Earthlink, meant to bring the city one step closer to city-wide free and cheap wifi plans. He reports below, and adds more at his blog. More »

6:00 AM on Thu Oct 19 2006
By Nick Douglas
821 views, 5 comments

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