In an industry where announcements are generally made through canned new
releases and press conferences, Yahoo! and SBC
launched its co-branded service Thursday to a flurry of ad banners.
It’s a novel approach that underscores both company’s reliance on Yahoo!’s
dominating Web presence to bring in new dial-up Internet subscribers. Both
dial-up and digital subscriber line (DSL) service were launched concurrently.
The SBC-Yahoo! partnership has been in the works since last November, when
officials from both sides agreed to
a deal that would capitalize on the strengths of each. Yahoo!, as one
of the most popular Web portals on the planet is well-suited as a content
provider to SBC, which supplies the infrastructure (i.e., dial-up and DSL
POPs).
In fact, in the months following the original arrangement, both company’s
further
strengthened ties in light of the positive buzz the original
announcement created, this time with a business broadband co-brand partnership.
SBC-Yahoo! have launched an aggressive marketing campaign to win converts
over to its service. For its dial-up service, the first month is free and
$21.95-a-month thereafter. SBC-Yahoo! DSL, on the other hand, is priced at
$29.95 for the first six months (normally $49.95) of the 12-month contract.
For DSL, other speed options and discounts are available, though the Web
site is promoting only the low-end asymmetric DSL offering (ADSL) now,
since $29.95 sounds a lot better to migrating dial-up users for a 384 Kbps
service than $39.95 a month for 768 Kbps ADSL does.
Included with SBC-Yahoo! dial-up and DSL accounts are 25 MB of online
storage and a Web-based POP3 email account with 10 sub-user email addresses
available through Yahoo!