Just when you thought that dial-up is going to the way of the Yankees, here comes Netzero (owned by United Online) with a technology they are calling “3G” that is faster than (obviously) AOL’s dial-up and uses compression hacks to give users an “instant” Internet experience. (Google’s web accelerator also does pretty much the same!) Reading David Freeberg’s post I could not figure out what special sauce Netzero is going to be using except caching and compression, but Mark Goldston was paranoid enough to not give out details, lets Netscape and People PC copy then. Netzero is also launching a VoIP service soon …. no details, but David seems to be seriously excited. I remain skeptical of VoIP over dial-up for many reasons. I think they might be doing some kind of a VoIP chat service, but that’s all.
Goldston said that it would be something that was majorly different then any other VOIP product — something that would really set them apart and not just on price. Goldston was optimistic that this would really shock the market when they introduce it.
” . . . but Mark Goldston was paranoid enough to not give out details, lets Netscape and People PC copy then.”
Or, lest people realize it is all BS.
yup… succinctly put.
Quite obviously BS really 🙂
However, there is something of interest from Tom Keatings blog:
‘According to David’s blog post, Mark Goldston, United’’s CEO said, “that it would be something that was majorly different then any other VOIP product — something that would really set them apart and not just on price”. David goes on to say that Goldston was optimistic that this would really shock the market when they introduce it.’
I still dont even belive the NetZero Ads that claim it can load ebay.com in 3 seconds over dial up!
Chris
yes there is something about that company which makes me wonder about how truthful they are – given their ads… well a little bit of exaggeration.
Not realy, techinaclly according to the old 5x internet you were at broadband speed. People think of cable or DSL but actual broadband starts at a much lower speed.
That’s a load of bs, John – do a google search on definitions of broadband. Yes, there’s currently a bunch of discussion on what the bottom end of broadband is considered to be, but NOBODY claims broadband for less than 128 k UNCOMPRESSED (e.g. dual channel ISDN, which rolled out in the early 80’s) and the general industry consensus (based on several lawsuits in the UK and US) is that 500kbps and up throughput (including gains from compression) is the minimum speed to legally call it broadband. If you notice, NetZero is VERY careful not to claim they are selling broadband-they’re just trying to compare themselves to broadband. Which is a bunch of b.s…
The only thing ‘new’ I see about 3G is the ‘pre-fetch’ option, and this scares me. It would seem that you set your PC to dial up at a determined time to get the stuff (Favs & E-Mail) you want when you go online. The upside to this is everything you want is already on your system.
The downside, and I consider it a big one, is you are giving your PC permission to dial up automatically which is pure insanity. Just ask anyone that has had the Dialer.Trojan and had hours of calls to Belgium!
Allowing your PC to dial automatically is a security risk that United Online should have considered…………. or maybe they did??? Who knows, maybe they track!
Anyway, 3G is nothing new. Pre-Fetch is pure BS.