Both ISPs blame on declining Usenet demand.
Now I’m no fan of Usenet, but many are and so it’s likely sad for some to discover that several more ISPs – Comcast and RCN – have decided to discontinue offering free newsgroup services. Time Warner already did so last month.
"Yea, you could say it’s official. The news (nntp) service as provided by RCN is being phased out," writes Bryan Laird, Director of Product and Technology for RCN, in a blog posting. "In large part due to non usage yes there were a few (and by few I mean an incredibly small number) customers who used it however, several times that are using nntp service from a third party."
"Additionally for the same reasons that other MSO’s are discontinuing the service we are going in the same direction.," he added.
RCN customers are rightly upset, with one individual comparing it to SOP for cell phone companies who seem to tell you only after they do something.
The person writes:
Bryan,
I suppose it would have been proper to give customers at least a 30 day notice before terminating the service [instantly].
I reviewed several months of past statements. Could not find any indication of impending service changes.
It’s like one of the cell companies removing a feature and informing the customers after the fact.
A Comcast rep was apparently monitoring the RCN exchange on DSL Reports and decided that he should inform customers of the ISP that it planned to do the same. In fact, it was dropped immediately for new subscribers, but would be accessible by existing customers until Oct 25th.
Comcastcares writes:
The Comcast Newsgroups Service Discontinued
The Comcast Newsgroups service, powered by Giganews will be discontinued as of September 17th. Existing customers will continue to be able to access the service until October 25th.
This decision is in alignment with other Internet Service Providers that have recently terminated their Newsgroups service due to the declining popularity of Newsgroups as customers chose other methods, such as RSS feeds and web browsing to access information.
Some say the service was lousy anyways, but some are angry at with what they see as a trend by ISPs to steadily decrease services while simultaneously raising their subscription rates.
"So will Comcast be reducing our bills since the equivalent service from Giganews is $7.99 per month?," writes one respondent. "I doubt it. Comcast just takes and takes while either raising prices or restricting/dropping services."
As I said, I’m no fan of Usenet, but it is disturbing to see this trend by ISPs to narrow the services and features that they offer their loyal, bill-paying customers.
jared@zeropaid.com
Related Posts
- Verizon Drops Several Binary Newsgroups
- Encrypted Usenet Access Announced by Giganews
- It’s Official, Comcast to Have 250GB Data Cap Starting Oct 1st
- How to Download From Newsgroups
- Verizon Quits Free Usenet Access Sep 30th
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Why are you no fan of Usenet? Also can’t people access Usenet through the Web? How can these ISPs “drop” them? I am confused please help explain this. Thanks.
@ I dont like Usenet cause u have to pay a monthly subscription fee for a decent newsgroup service..after $60 for my broadband connection I dont want to shell out any more.
Okay so how can they be blocked?
That’s incorrect. When an ISP is saying that they are dropping UseNet they mean that they are no longer offering their free services to their subscribers. This forces people to either addopt a different protocol or pay a subscription fee (which is what you referred to in your comment)
Chances are the cost of running the service was too high (likely profit margine based and not economics ba sed) and they dropped their service. Usenet is an excellent resource for materials and I certainly knew the difference when my ISP dropped the service. It’s like suddenly losing a massive private BitTorrent site that didn’t enforce ratios even though everyone uploaded huge amounts as if they were enforced. Trust me even just a few days of retention it’s at least as good as BitTorrent. Premium services just overshadow BitTorrent in terms of content and speeds. Since it was relatively complex for beginners n00bs usually were kept off the system (which is both good and bad)
If you pay for a premium service it’s a third party. If an ISP were to block the protocol a) premium services woudl be down their throats for lost revenues and b) large corporations would be twisting the ISPs ears because they can’t message collegues like they usually do.