Tuesday, February 12, 2008

AOL PhoneLine RIP

While catching up on my reading, I came across this, and a quick check of the homepage for AOL PhoneLine confirmed it - it's gone. It been replaced with "AIM Dial Out", which, as the name implies, doesn't have dial in capability.

I'm not surprised PhoneLine died - if after 30 days there was no activity you lost not only the number, but the ability to get a number for that screen name. So if you wanted to try it again you had to create a new AOL/AIM account. I understand wanting to monetize a service, but that level of inconvenience is just shooting yourself in the foot. And the way it used SIP but wasn't open didn't help either.

Oh well, I said a year ago that it was little more than a toy VOIP provider.