United Online Serves Better Dial-Up

While other national ISPs are devoting their resources to competing in the broadband space, United Online continues to see a bright future in dial-up along with partners Zoom and Level 3.

by Thor Olavsrud of internetnews.com [September 23, 2002]

While other national ISPs are devoting their resources to competing in the broadband space, United Online (Nasdaq: UNTD) continues to see a bright future in dial-up, as evidenced by its decision Thursday to roll out support for V.92 dial-up modem technology.

V.92 allows users to receive calls on the same lines which their modems are connected to, without dropping their Internet connection. V.92 modems are also faster than today's 56K modems, though they have not yet had much of a competitive edge in the marketplace because no national ISPs supported the technology.

"There's a huge base of dial-up users today," said United Online Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer John Fetveit. "We think that there will be dial-up users for a long time. We're going to be there with them as the medium evolves. This is one step along the evolution of dial-up."

Fetveit noted that United Online's competitors have not invested much in dial-up lately. "That's what we spend the bulk of our time on."

With the help of partners Level 3 Communications (Nasdaq: LVL3) and Zoom Telephonics (Nasdaq: ZOOM) United Online has extended V.92 numbers to about 68 percent of NetZero and Juno's national coverage area.

"It's been delineated by population," Fetveit said. "Every major metropolitan market in the country is covered."

That makes United Online one of the first national providers to offer V.92 connections, which can allow users to put their modems "on hold" in order to answer an incoming phone call. The feature requires call-waiting. Users with Caller ID can also see who is calling before they put their modems on hold. United Online said users will initially have a four minute window to keep their connections on hold before they are dropped.

In addition, users that take advantage of United Online's V.92 numbers will be able to use the "Quick Connect" feature, which maintains a profile of a user's dial-up connection, including specific line conditions, eliminating the re-education process modems undertake each time they connect to the Internet. United Online said the feature will reduce connection times by four to six seconds.

Level 3 is behind the infrastructure. Fetveit said the firm has V.92 up and running across its entire network. Zoom supplied the consumer hardware piece of the puzzle, with its V.92-capable modems. The three companies are cooperating to jointly market the V.92 service.

"It's really a matter of what the consumers want," Fetveit said. "We're not charging anything extra for V.92. To the extent users are demanding it, we'll provide it. If there's enough of a demand from consumers, we'll accelerate the rollout.

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