AOL recently announced that they’d be changing their pricing plans with a $2 increase from $23.90 to $25.90 a month for dial-up, which of course isn’t going to be a popular change. However, the interesting part of this change is that AOL has worked out agreements with companies to bundle an AOL subscription with a broadband connection, for guess how much? Right, $25.90 a month — the same price as dial-up. This is incredible, but people aren’t as excited about this as I would have expected. Why not?
I’m guessing that lots of folks read the BetaNews article on this, and like Gray Rentz over at MobilitySite, didn’t fully understand the new deal. I left a few comments over there, including a link to the more elaborate AP article, trying to clear things up a bit. I think Gray’s understanding is that you’ll be paying for a broadband connection (whatever that already costs) and then $25.90 a month on top of that for your AOL subscription. If Gray’s interpretation is any indication of the general understanding people got from this change, no wonder people aren’t excited by this news. From the AP article, it definitely sounds like the $25.90 a month pricing includes the broadband connection and an AOL subscription. In other words, what people were already paying for just a broadband connection before, they can now get an AOL subscription for no additional cost! If you ask me, this is huge!
I hope this makes the new pricing change make more sense to people. It’s a great deal for AOL subscribers who have been thinking about leaving AOL for a plain broadband connection, or reluctant to upgrade from dial-up to broadband … now, there’s no reason to leave AOL, and pricing is no longer a deciding factor between dial-up and broadband.
This could very well be the start of another September that Never Ended.
Programmer, husband, father, singer, guitarist, tinkerer, reverse engineer, strange, and living in New Jersey. 
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