Covad Communications Group Inc. is offering a bare-bones high-speed Internet service for 5 dollars less than its regular package. But to get e-mail and other features normally included with the connection, you'll have to pay another provider even more.
Covad offers "Broadband Connect" for $34.95 a month and is marketing it with America Online Inc. to provide e-mail, software and content for another $14.95.
Customers are also free to use Covad with another provider like MSN or EarthLink, and they can still get Covad's regular service for $39.95.
Thursday's announcement comes about a month after AOL quietly stopped offering a complete broadband package. The new offering allows high-speed subscribers to get AOL without essentially paying twice for e-mail and other features Covad normally provides.
Lisa Hook, president of AOL for Broadband, Premium and Platform Services, said AOL got out of the access business because it lacked the technical and operational expertise and often had to transfer customer support calls back and forth.
With the new partnership, each company handles separate billing and support.
"Covad is going to deliver the services that we're experts at, the connectivity, and AOL is going to deliver services that they are experts at, which is the application layer and content," said David McMorrow, Covad's executive vice president of sales and marketing.
The new Covad-AOL package works out to $49.90, about 5 dollars less than the old broadband bundle but 10 dollars more than Covad's regular service.
Potential customers include existing AOL dial-up customers who want to upgrade to high speed without losing their e-mail addresses.
AOL has about 3 million broadband and 21 million dial-up subscribers in the United States.
Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
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