Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and
Speaker 1: I love all things tech. And previously on tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: Wait now that that doesn't sound hang on what Previously
Speaker 1: on tech Stuff we covered the origins of the Internet
Speaker 1: service provider earth Link. I talked about how Sky Dayton
Speaker 1: founded the company, which started off with ten modems that
Speaker 1: would connect customers with the Internet at large dial up
Speaker 1: modem systems is what we're talking about here, and then
Speaker 1: how Dayton and his team grew that business by partnering
Speaker 1: with other companies to expand service. Earth Link least capacities
Speaker 1: from companies like credit card verification Services and other I
Speaker 1: s p s to reach across the United States and
Speaker 1: then eventually into Canada and then beyond. Now along the way,
Speaker 1: Sky would step down as CEO. He handed control over
Speaker 1: to Gary Betty, while Dayton would stay on as chairman
Speaker 1: of the board. For a while longer. Earth Link made
Speaker 1: several acquisitions. They bought up a lot of regional, small
Speaker 1: I s p s and they grew as a result,
Speaker 1: until in nine the company announced it was going to
Speaker 1: merge with another company, mind Spring, which was a rival
Speaker 1: I SP located out of Atlanta, Georgia, my hometown, And
Speaker 1: in two thousand those two companies became one, and the
Speaker 1: merger meant that the new version of earth Link was
Speaker 1: the second largest I s P in America at that point,
Speaker 1: behind America Online. Uh, America Online actually had a pretty
Speaker 1: significant head start in the consumer market. Now, one thing
Speaker 1: I should clarify is that balance of customers, because often
Speaker 1: I find myself thinking of I s p s from
Speaker 1: a household customer perspective, because I mean I am I
Speaker 1: am an I s P customer like a household customer,
Speaker 1: and I'm not actually running a business like that. But
Speaker 1: obviously a lot of I s P customers are actually businesses,
Speaker 1: not consumers, not individuals. And earth Link was a leading
Speaker 1: I s P for enterprise customers, meaning earth Link had
Speaker 1: a lot of businesses as their clients. And when you
Speaker 1: look at the consumer market, there were other companies that
Speaker 1: were performing much better in that market, like the aforementioned
Speaker 1: America Online as well as Prodigy, which, like America Online,
Speaker 1: had begun as an online service provider, which is not
Speaker 1: the same thing as an I s P. It's sort
Speaker 1: of a walled garden network. It's not access to the
Speaker 1: Internet at large, but they had also transitioned from that
Speaker 1: to an Internet service provider. By two thousand, America Online
Speaker 1: had twenty million subscribers, largely because a o L was
Speaker 1: sending out installation CDs like they were nothing. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you were back around those days, like if you
Speaker 1: were checking your mail, you probably made a few jokes
Speaker 1: about turning a O L c d s into drink
Speaker 1: coasters or a mobile for your kid or something, because
Speaker 1: it seemed like you would get a couple in the
Speaker 1: mail every week or so. But that kind of strategy
Speaker 1: was actually working, as a o L had around those
Speaker 1: twenty million customers. Earth Link, by contrast, had slightly fewer
Speaker 1: than five million customers, so yeah, there's like a fifteen
Speaker 1: million person gap there. But earth Link also had a
Speaker 1: huge number of enterprise customers, so the company was doing
Speaker 1: pretty well from a financial perspective, at least as far
Speaker 1: as revenue. When it came to profit, not so much,
Speaker 1: but that's because earth Link was pouring a lot of
Speaker 1: that money into acquiring other companies and growing, so it
Speaker 1: was kind of a growth engine. But not a profit
Speaker 1: engine at this point. Now, something else was going on
Speaker 1: in the technological world while earth Link was growing. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna be doing some backtracking in this episode because
Speaker 1: there was stuff that I guess technically I could have
Speaker 1: covered in part one, but I really wanted to get
Speaker 1: to that that description of how earth Link and MindSpring
Speaker 1: would become the earth Link of the future. But uh,
Speaker 1: the thing that we want to go back to right
Speaker 1: now is the ascension of other technologies that allowed for
Speaker 1: internet broadband connectivity, because not only would it create alternatives
Speaker 1: to dial up, it also was tied into what would
Speaker 1: become the major competitor and ultimately the death knell for
Speaker 1: a lot of internet service providers. So earth Link launched
Speaker 1: in the dial up modeme era as it was passing
Speaker 1: its peak. So dial up was starting to get to
Speaker 1: the best, the most that it's ever been, and then
Speaker 1: it was very slowly starting to decline. Now, dial up
Speaker 1: modems are still very much a thing. They're not gone.
Speaker 1: They exist to this day. So when I talk about
Speaker 1: a dial up era, um, I really mean the period
Speaker 1: in which that technology was the dominant one. Also, when
Speaker 1: Earthlink launched a state of the art consumer modem which
Speaker 1: gets you the blistering speed of twenty eight point eight
Speaker 1: killabits per second. But around the corner was the emergence
Speaker 1: of fifty six kilabits per second modems. Still, other technologies
Speaker 1: would enter the fray and change things, and we were
Speaker 1: about to enter the era of broadband. Now, anyone who
Speaker 1: used an old dial up modem to do something like
Speaker 1: load up a web page knows that it could be
Speaker 1: painstakingly slow. If you had a twenty eight point eight
Speaker 1: killabits per second modem and you wanted to log into
Speaker 1: a page that had two of images and other stuff
Speaker 1: in it, it would take more than a minute for
Speaker 1: that web page to load on your browser, and a
Speaker 1: lot of early web pages went sparingly on images for
Speaker 1: that reason. So let's say you wanted to do something
Speaker 1: even more intensive, like you wanted to download an MP
Speaker 1: three a song, And for the sake of this exam,
Speaker 1: well we'll say it's an MP three of a song
Speaker 1: that's five megabytes in size. Now, over a twenty eight
Speaker 1: point eight kill abits per second modem, that would take
Speaker 1: you about half an hour to download one song. And
Speaker 1: this was the top of the line modem when earth
Speaker 1: Link was launching, and a lot of people were actually
Speaker 1: using modems that had much lower data transfer rates. Even
Speaker 1: when we'd get up to fifty six killa bits per second,
Speaker 1: you'd still be talking about waiting almost fifteen minutes to
Speaker 1: download a single song, and the whole time you're taking
Speaker 1: up a phone line. So some folks like my parents
Speaker 1: would arrange to have a separate phone line specifically for
Speaker 1: the computer modem, which was a good idea because if
Speaker 1: you were using a shared line and somewhere somewhere else
Speaker 1: in the house picked up a phone, it would interrupt
Speaker 1: your connection and you would have to reset, and if
Speaker 1: you were in the middle of a file transfer, you
Speaker 1: might have to start all over again. But as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: there were other technologies that were poised to keep things
Speaker 1: moving along at a faster pace, and one of them
Speaker 1: was a tech that had been in development more as
Speaker 1: a method of allowing telephone companies to compete with cable companies,
Speaker 1: not necessarily in the internet space, but in the providing
Speaker 1: of video type space. So this is going to get
Speaker 1: a bit technical, but stick with me. We need a
Speaker 1: super quick history of cable television, and I'll be specifically
Speaker 1: talking about coaxial cable, though you should know there's also
Speaker 1: fiber optic cable, but that would come much later. Coax
Speaker 1: cable essentially started in the nineteen forties with people who
Speaker 1: couldn't get a broadcast signal at their homes because they
Speaker 1: were just too far away from the center of broadcast
Speaker 1: and the antennas that they were using weren't picking up
Speaker 1: a strong enough signal for them to see anything. So
Speaker 1: they began to erect antennas in strategic locations, like at
Speaker 1: the top of a hill, and then they would run
Speaker 1: cable from the antennas down to the televisions in the
Speaker 1: nearby neighborhoods. Uh. There were enterprising individuals who did this
Speaker 1: and set it up as a business. And so their
Speaker 1: business was that they would build the antenna and then
Speaker 1: you would pay them for them to run cable from
Speaker 1: the antenna down to your home. And this was called
Speaker 1: community antenna television or ce A TV. That was the
Speaker 1: birth of cable television. People discovered that the cable signal
Speaker 1: would weaken the further it has to travel. So if
Speaker 1: you lived a far distance from that hill where the
Speaker 1: antenna was, and you just ran cable from the antenna
Speaker 1: to the TV you still might not get something that
Speaker 1: is watchable, but you could put in amplifiers so the
Speaker 1: signal would come into the amplifier. The amplifier would boost
Speaker 1: the signal and push it further down the line towards
Speaker 1: the televisions. You might have several amplifiers on a single line. However,
Speaker 1: amplifiers could also introduce noise into the signal, and thus
Speaker 1: that could get boosted as well. And cable systems weren't
Speaker 1: terribly reliable, so they weren't incredibly popular. They were just
Speaker 1: seen as the only alternative to no television at all
Speaker 1: if you happen to live outside of a broadcast area,
Speaker 1: so they were better than nothing. But it wasn't until
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies that advancements in technology and process would
Speaker 1: improve the experience and cable companies the way we know
Speaker 1: them today would become viable. The coaxial cable is an
Speaker 1: important part of this. If you were able to see
Speaker 1: the layers in a coaxial cable, you would see that
Speaker 1: at the very core of it, there is a conductive material,
Speaker 1: copper wire. Surrounding that copper wire is a layer of
Speaker 1: dielectric insulating material, and surrounding that is an outer conductor
Speaker 1: called the shield. So the outer and inner conductor are
Speaker 1: both aligned in the same direction, along the same axis.
Speaker 1: Think of a small straw nestled inside a larger straw,
Speaker 1: and that's why it's called a coaxial cable because they're
Speaker 1: both along the same axis. Information travels through coaxial cables
Speaker 1: along a carrier way, which then is modulated. You can
Speaker 1: modulate it by its amplitude, by its frequency, and by
Speaker 1: its phase. This gets into the electromagnetic spectrum, which is
Speaker 1: the range of all types of electromagnetic radiation. From super
Speaker 1: long radio waves that are miles and miles long two
Speaker 1: super short gamma rays. We can describe these waves in
Speaker 1: terms of wavelength, how long those waves are, or frequency.
Speaker 1: Frequency refers to the number of wavelengths that pass a
Speaker 1: given point within a second. We measure frequency and hurts,
Speaker 1: with one hurts being one wave per second. Okay, so
Speaker 1: how does cable TV send all those channels of content simultaneously?
Speaker 1: How come they don't all get mixed up? Well, the
Speaker 1: word channel is the key. A channel is actually a
Speaker 1: band of frequencies that is reserved to a specific television
Speaker 1: source like MTV. I mean, why not MTV I want
Speaker 1: my MTV. So in the US, AT channel consists of
Speaker 1: a bandwidth of spectrum within that that cable. You know,
Speaker 1: the cable can hold a certain spectrum of frequencies. Well,
Speaker 1: a channel is a bandwidth of six mega hurts, so
Speaker 1: it's six mega hurts wide across the available spectrum that
Speaker 1: the cable can carry. And within that six mega hurts
Speaker 1: band is all the information of that specific channel of television.
Speaker 1: That six mega hurts belongs to MTV. But you move
Speaker 1: over another six mega hurts to the next band, and
Speaker 1: you're at a different channel, and your cable box acts
Speaker 1: as a tuner. It switches over to accept signals from
Speaker 1: a specific band of frequencies. So it goes from one
Speaker 1: specific six mega hurts band to tune into whichever channel
Speaker 1: you want to watch. And the capacity of coaxial depends
Speaker 1: on a few factors, but generally we're talking about the
Speaker 1: ability to carry more than one hundred six mega hurts
Speaker 1: channels on analog signals that can travel across a coax cable. Now,
Speaker 1: note I said analog things switch up when you go
Speaker 1: to digital. Now, the reason I went into all of
Speaker 1: that is twofold one is because the telephone companies were
Speaker 1: rather jealous of cable companies. Telephone companies already had wired
Speaker 1: infrastructure laid out across entire countries. If a phone company
Speaker 1: could deliver content the way cable companies did, it would
Speaker 1: represent an enormous jump in revenue. Because remember, once you've
Speaker 1: built out your infrastructure so it so it meets, you know,
Speaker 1: the vast majority of of individuals who could be customers,
Speaker 1: you've hit market saturation. You can't really grow anymore, so
Speaker 1: you have limited ways of increasing your revenue. And we
Speaker 1: typically reward companies that show growth year over year. It's
Speaker 1: not just it's not just good enough to perform well,
Speaker 1: you need to grow. The other reason is that later
Speaker 1: on in the two thousand, we'd see the rise of
Speaker 1: cable internet connectivity, which would make a huge impact on
Speaker 1: the I s P industry. But first let's go back
Speaker 1: over and look at the phone companies. So the telephonic
Speaker 1: infrastructure relied on what are called twisted pair cables, which
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that they're deviant or anything. They're not that
Speaker 1: kind of twisted. They're literally twisted together. This is something
Speaker 1: that dates all the way back to Alexander Graham Bell
Speaker 1: himself twisted pair cables consists of pairs of wires, So
Speaker 1: you get two wires, they form a circuit that's capable
Speaker 1: of transmitting data, and these two wires are twisted together,
Speaker 1: which in turn shields those wires from interference also known
Speaker 1: as cross talk, from other pairs of wires which are
Speaker 1: also twisted, and a cable is made up of lots
Speaker 1: of these twisted pairs, all bundled together. By the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: researchers at telephone companies were working hard to figure out
Speaker 1: how to deliver more information over telephone wires in an
Speaker 1: effort to come pete against cable companies. It was possible
Speaker 1: to transmit data like video across these lines. There were
Speaker 1: television studios that we're using twisted pair cables to send
Speaker 1: video from a studio to a broadcast area. But you
Speaker 1: couldn't do it with the same amount of throughput that
Speaker 1: you could manage with cable that twisted wires just couldn't
Speaker 1: carry as much data per unit of time, And a
Speaker 1: big part of the problem was that having the same
Speaker 1: bandwidth for upstream and downstream transmissions, in other words, having
Speaker 1: equal amounts of capacity to send stuff up and to
Speaker 1: bring stuff down would cause problems, and an engineer and
Speaker 1: scientist with Belcore named Joseph lech Lighter would find a
Speaker 1: big breakthrough. Lech Lighter found that if you offset the
Speaker 1: upstream and downstream bandwidth allocation, meaning you'd allow more data
Speaker 1: to travel in one direction versus the other in that
Speaker 1: same amount of time, you could dramatically increase the overall
Speaker 1: amount of information that could travel over those lines. So
Speaker 1: it's called a symmetric meaning the upstream and downstream band
Speaker 1: what's are not symmetrical, and because most users tend to
Speaker 1: pull down more information than they need to upload, the
Speaker 1: downstream side would get the most love, and to this
Speaker 1: day it's pretty common to see a much higher download
Speaker 1: rate than an upload rate, though it's not always about
Speaker 1: the same process that Leclighter found, but that that's not
Speaker 1: really important and it would take about two decades for
Speaker 1: lec Lighter's work to have a real practical application. It
Speaker 1: would be called a d s L for a symmetric
Speaker 1: digital subscriber line. Most of the time we just referred
Speaker 1: to it as DSL A, and not all DSL is asymmetric.
Speaker 1: There's also symmetrical DSL, but a lot of people just
Speaker 1: shorten it to DSL anyway. Now, a DSL connection allowed
Speaker 1: for much greater data transfer rates than what you could
Speaker 1: accomplish with a regular dial up modem. The dial up modems,
Speaker 1: again they maxed out it fifty six bits per second,
Speaker 1: but DSL could reach speeds of more than ten times that,
Speaker 1: and over time, as technology improved, it would reach speeds
Speaker 1: of up to one hundred megabits per second. Now, if
Speaker 1: you listen to my episode about Section two thirty and
Speaker 1: what that's all about, you've heard me talk about the
Speaker 1: Telecommunications Act of If you recall, I mentioned that this
Speaker 1: Act was a truly huge piece of legislation and section
Speaker 1: to thirty is just a tiny, tiny piece of it.
Speaker 1: And Section to thirty, for those who don't know, is
Speaker 1: a passage that grants widespread legal immunity to Internet platforms
Speaker 1: for stuff that people post to those platforms. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, it means that if someone posts illegal content
Speaker 1: on a platform, the platform itself isn't held accountable for
Speaker 1: that act. But Section to thirty was such a tiny
Speaker 1: piece of the overall picture that I think it's safe
Speaker 1: to say most politicians weren't really focusing on it. One
Speaker 1: thing the Act did was open up the possibility for
Speaker 1: both the cable industry and the telephone industry to get
Speaker 1: into the business of being Internet service providers, considering these
Speaker 1: industries already had massive infrastructures built into the fabric of
Speaker 1: the modern society, and that technologies like DSL and cable
Speaker 1: would mean they would eventually be able to offer up
Speaker 1: faster service than dial up I s p s could.
Speaker 1: It would mean that there would be some fierce competition
Speaker 1: in the space, and that companies that were once bulletproof,
Speaker 1: like America Online and earth Link would have a more
Speaker 1: uncertain future. When we come back, I'll talk about how
Speaker 1: all this would converge and what would happen to earth
Speaker 1: Link in the meantime, But first let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: So throughout the nineties, as telephone and cable companies worked
Speaker 1: to create an economically feasible means of entering the I
Speaker 1: s P industry now that they had the green light
Speaker 1: to do so from the US government, dial up remained
Speaker 1: the primary way most people were connecting to the Internet,
Speaker 1: and companies like earth Link we're doing well, but there
Speaker 1: was a ticking clock element going on. No one was
Speaker 1: certain when the broadband era would really take over from
Speaker 1: dial up, but it seemed pretty much a guarantee that
Speaker 1: that is what was going to happen. But in those
Speaker 1: intervening years, earth Link kept making big moves. So back
Speaker 1: in the nineties before the mind Spring merger, earth Link
Speaker 1: continued to make strategic partnerships with companies like sign Net
Speaker 1: or p s i Net, another early I s P
Speaker 1: to provide access to more of North America, including Canada,
Speaker 1: and it also signed a deal with Microsoft. Earth Link
Speaker 1: would provide customers with the company's browser Internet Explorer, much
Speaker 1: as they had done with Netscape Navigator earlier. In return,
Speaker 1: Microsoft included earth Link in a suite of pre installed
Speaker 1: applications on Windows and I cannot stress to you how
Speaker 1: valuable that would be for a company to have your app,
Speaker 1: your portal to your service in looted as a native
Speaker 1: application on the most popular operating system in the world.
Speaker 1: It is beyond valuable. Earth Link also began to offer
Speaker 1: I S d N service. Now, this was sort of
Speaker 1: a step between the normal phone lines being used with
Speaker 1: modems and the upcoming DSL lines. It provided faster data
Speaker 1: transfer rates, but it never really caught on in a
Speaker 1: huge way, particularly since DSL would outperform I s D
Speaker 1: and benchmarks, So it was kind of a stop gap
Speaker 1: measure that came a little too late. So no one,
Speaker 1: not not that many people really adopted it. In out
Speaker 1: in California, earth Link signed a deal with Charter Communications
Speaker 1: and a cable company, and the partnership would be one
Speaker 1: of the early ones to provide cable internet service to
Speaker 1: a particular region. So this wasn't nationwide or anything. It
Speaker 1: was for a very specific market, and it did involve
Speaker 1: cable modems. So this was an early example of that
Speaker 1: earth Link executives were clearly thinking ahead because even as
Speaker 1: modems speeds were switching over to fifty bits per second,
Speaker 1: they were looking at technologies that were clearly going to
Speaker 1: be faster and would replace dial up service within within
Speaker 1: a few years. So now it's time to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about how cable modems work. Now. I mentioned
Speaker 1: that television channels each take up six mega hurts of
Speaker 1: a band of frequencies across the available spectrum of frequencies
Speaker 1: that can travel down a coaxial cable. With cable modems,
Speaker 1: the downstream Internet traffic to customers likewise takes up six
Speaker 1: mega hurts band of frequencies. Upstream is a little different.
Speaker 1: Instead of taking up a whole channel, it actually only
Speaker 1: uses a two mega hurts band of frequencies, so you
Speaker 1: get six mega hurts width down two mega hurts with
Speaker 1: up and since most people are downloading way more than
Speaker 1: their uploading, this really isn't a problem for most people.
Speaker 1: At the provider end of this system, you've got your
Speaker 1: cable modem termination system. At the customer end, you've got
Speaker 1: your cable modem, and that cable modem has a few
Speaker 1: components that allow you to access the Internet. First, there's
Speaker 1: the tuner. This component tunes the modem to the specific
Speaker 1: channel that's carrying the Internet signal as opposed to channel
Speaker 1: carrying C A TV signals. The incoming signal then goes
Speaker 1: to the next component, a demodulator. Now, the most common
Speaker 1: demodulators have four functions. A quadrature amplitude modulation or q
Speaker 1: a M demodulator takes an encoded radio frequency signal and
Speaker 1: turns it into a simple signal that can be processed
Speaker 1: by the analog to digital converter or a D converter.
Speaker 1: The converter's job, it's in the name, really, it's to
Speaker 1: take an analog signal that is a continuous signal, which
Speaker 1: in this case is an electric signal with varying voltage,
Speaker 1: and then transforms that continuous signal into digital information, which
Speaker 1: means it turns into a series of zeros and ones. Next,
Speaker 1: you've got your error correction module. This module analyzes the
Speaker 1: signal and compares it against a known standard to identify
Speaker 1: any potential errors that happened in transmission. Frequently we're dealing
Speaker 1: with data that is an IMPEG format for the purposes
Speaker 1: of grouping data into network frames. IMPEG is not just
Speaker 1: for movies and music. It's it's a kind of a
Speaker 1: data arrangement strategy. So there's also an IMPEG synchronizer in
Speaker 1: cable modems, which really is just there to make sure
Speaker 1: that the frames are all in the correct order. You
Speaker 1: can kind of think of it as being responsible for
Speaker 1: making sure all the puzzle pieces are going to the
Speaker 1: right place to make the full picture. Likewise, the modem
Speaker 1: also has a modulator to take the data you're sending
Speaker 1: back upstream and convert it into a radio frequency signal
Speaker 1: that can travel over the cable connection. Another component of
Speaker 1: cable modems is the Media Access control or MAC address Now,
Speaker 1: this is pretty much a standard part of all networking equipment,
Speaker 1: and that includes devices that connect to works, and it
Speaker 1: serves as a way for these devices to differentiate themselves
Speaker 1: on a local network. So we're really talking about local
Speaker 1: networks here, not Internet. But it's important because otherwise you
Speaker 1: wouldn't have a way for the network to send the
Speaker 1: correct information to the correct device. If you have a
Speaker 1: bunch of different devices connected to the same local area network,
Speaker 1: they have to have a way to say this is
Speaker 1: who I am, so that the right data goes to them.
Speaker 1: All devices connecting to a network have a MAC address,
Speaker 1: and it's how we make sure the right data goes
Speaker 1: to the right device. Otherwise you'd have an issue with
Speaker 1: multiple devices connected to a local area network as a
Speaker 1: further connection to the Internet at large, and everything would
Speaker 1: be mixed up and that would be terrible. Cable modems
Speaker 1: also have a microprocessor to oversee operations within the modem itself,
Speaker 1: and that's a quick and very high level look at
Speaker 1: how early cable modems worked. There's a lot more to
Speaker 1: it than that, but it would require its own episode.
Speaker 1: The important thing for our story is that the cable
Speaker 1: modems represented another big step forward and speed. Also as
Speaker 1: a cable connection as well as the DSL connections are constant.
Speaker 1: That means you don't have to worry about turning it
Speaker 1: on and turning it off, like assuming there's no interruption
Speaker 1: in service. You always have a persistent connection to the Internet,
Speaker 1: unlike a dial up which has to activate a phone
Speaker 1: line and then it has to hang up at the
Speaker 1: end of the session. Your your cable modems are always connected.
Speaker 1: Your dial up modems are only connected when you activate it.
Speaker 1: So Internet services in general and the Web in particular
Speaker 1: started to offer more data intensive features such as streaming
Speaker 1: audio or video. The need for broadband solutions became more pressing,
Speaker 1: but we're still in the early days here, and dial
Speaker 1: up modems would remain a big player for a while.
Speaker 1: Earth Link kept making big alliances. The companies signed a
Speaker 1: deal with Sprint that gave Sprint a stake in earth
Speaker 1: Link in return for access to Sprint's customers, and a
Speaker 1: deal with Apple would mean that earth Links software became
Speaker 1: the default Internet connectivity software and apples i'm ac computers.
Speaker 1: Earth Link also was the default connectivity software for n
Speaker 1: ec Ready computers and Packard Bell computers and comp us
Speaker 1: A chose earth Link to be the default Internet connectivity
Speaker 1: software provider for the computers sold in retail stores. All
Speaker 1: of this led up to that merger with mind Spring,
Speaker 1: which was likewise making big deals. Mind Spring was doing
Speaker 1: very much the same sort of stuff earth Link was doing,
Speaker 1: but over in Atlanta, and earth Link was able to
Speaker 1: dip its toe into DSL through its partnership with Sprint.
Speaker 1: And a quick word about the differences between DSL and cable.
Speaker 1: So DSL goes over phone lines, but you didn't have
Speaker 1: to have a landline to also get DSL. You can
Speaker 1: think of DSL traffic is taking up a frequency of
Speaker 1: bands and telephone lines that's well outside the frequency bands
Speaker 1: that are used to transmit voice communications. With DSL, you
Speaker 1: can get pretty fast Internet speeds, much faster than dial up.
Speaker 1: But it also depended upon how far away you were
Speaker 1: from the DSL provider, kind of like when I described
Speaker 1: cable early or if you're really far away from whatever
Speaker 1: the provider is, you're going to get lower transfer rates,
Speaker 1: so you're gonna get lower Internet speeds. That's the way
Speaker 1: we typically think about it. Cable, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: could provide a good experience even if you were far
Speaker 1: away from a provider. However, DSL allowed for a dedicated
Speaker 1: line to each customer, So when you had a DSL line,
Speaker 1: you had a dedicated connection, whereas cable is a shared
Speaker 1: connection across entire neighborhoods. So with cable, if there are
Speaker 1: a lot of people in your neighborhood who are all
Speaker 1: really heavy Internet users, you're gonna see your speeds take
Speaker 1: a hit because they might be streaming for a K
Speaker 1: video or something, or they might be gaming, they might
Speaker 1: be doing something that's just taking up a lot of bandwidth,
Speaker 1: and so as a result, the overall bandwidth that's shared
Speaker 1: for the entire community is taking a hit. Anyway, earth
Speaker 1: Link was now working with partners that would allow it
Speaker 1: to kind of trans Asian from dial up, but only
Speaker 1: because they were piggybacking onto these other providers. After the
Speaker 1: merger with MindSpring, the new company officially called earth Link Incorporated,
Speaker 1: would continue to grow, and like we've seen, that growth
Speaker 1: was mainly through acquisitions, such as when earth Link purchased
Speaker 1: an I s B called one Main dot Com that's
Speaker 1: O N E M A I N and earth Link
Speaker 1: continued to branch out beyond dial up, DSL and Cable
Speaker 1: Access partnering with Hughes Network Systems to provide satellite broadband
Speaker 1: services for customers who lived in rural areas where cable
Speaker 1: or DSL connections could not reach. So satellite systems work
Speaker 1: differently from DSL and cable and that you need to
Speaker 1: have a transceiver in other words, of satellite dish to
Speaker 1: interface with the system. You still have a modulator, which
Speaker 1: is the bit that translates data from one form to another.
Speaker 1: When you send something on your computer to the Internet,
Speaker 1: the modulator converts the digital information from your computer into
Speaker 1: radio signals that the satellite dish then transmits up to
Speaker 1: a satellite that's up in orbit way above the customer,
Speaker 1: and the satellite then beams that information back down to
Speaker 1: the provider, which sends data back up into space to
Speaker 1: that satellite, which then beams it back down to the customer.
Speaker 1: So it all works the same way, but in reverse. Now,
Speaker 1: as you might imagine beaming data up into space and
Speaker 1: then having it come back down again, and having that
Speaker 1: happen in two different directions means that there can be
Speaker 1: a bit of delay when you do something on the Internet,
Speaker 1: like when you click on a link, and then there
Speaker 1: could be a delay before you see a result. The
Speaker 1: data rate transfer speed can still be really high. You
Speaker 1: can still get you know, data, very fast rates, but
Speaker 1: there's more latency or lag than you would have with
Speaker 1: other solutions. Earth Link even secured in agreement with the
Speaker 1: leading I s P in the United States, America Online.
Speaker 1: That agreement would allow earth Link to use Time Warner
Speaker 1: cable lines to offer up high speed k Internet service
Speaker 1: to customers, because at this point there was the infamous
Speaker 1: America Online Time Warner merger, one of the mergers that
Speaker 1: at one point was pointed at as being one of
Speaker 1: the worst big tech mergers of all time. The year
Speaker 1: was two thousand, and earth Link was looking to put
Speaker 1: behind it a history of struggling to be profitable. Earth
Speaker 1: Link hannot really made a profit yet they were bringing
Speaker 1: in a lot of revenue, but again they were spending
Speaker 1: a lot in acquisitions and efforts to grow and stay
Speaker 1: ahead of the competition, as well as to make moves
Speaker 1: and diversifying beyond dial up. And this was likely a
Speaker 1: necessity as the period between two thousands saw thousands of
Speaker 1: local and regional I s p s, like around ten
Speaker 1: thousand of these suckers. But they started to consolidate or
Speaker 1: they were getting swept up in various acquisitions, and there
Speaker 1: was a general move of consolidation in the industry, and
Speaker 1: earth Link was one of the bigger fish gobbling up
Speaker 1: smaller fish in the I s P pond as it
Speaker 1: were sky Dayton. Meanwhile, the founder of earth Link, who
Speaker 1: had remained chairman but who had stepped down as CEO,
Speaker 1: founded another venture called Bongo. This company also focused on
Speaker 1: providing internet service, but through WiFi, and rather than building
Speaker 1: out infrastructure, Bongo would partner with companies that had already
Speaker 1: built out WiFi networks, much as earth Link had partnered
Speaker 1: with other I s p s or network systems back
Speaker 1: in the day. Earth Link would be an investor in Boingo,
Speaker 1: but the two ventures wouldn't be intertwined too much. In
Speaker 1: the early two thousand's, earth Link would feel the squeeze
Speaker 1: as more households made the transition from dial up to DSL,
Speaker 1: cable or satellite service. While earth Link had partnerships with
Speaker 1: companies that provided these services, the fact was that earth
Speaker 1: Link itself didn't own any of that infrastructure, and the
Speaker 1: Telecommunications Act of six meant that phone and cable companies
Speaker 1: could also serve as Internet service providers. So earth Link
Speaker 1: was looking at a couple of major threats to its business.
Speaker 1: There was a migration away from premium dial up internet
Speaker 1: service that was its bread and butter. And there was
Speaker 1: the rise of the mega I s p s that
Speaker 1: owned much of the broadband infrastructure. In fact, some of
Speaker 1: them were major parts of the backbone of the Internet.
Speaker 1: So while earth Link would start to post some profitable
Speaker 1: quarters largely due to a combination of cost cutting and
Speaker 1: diversifying into broadband, analysts were already worrying that the company
Speaker 1: was going to go from a big fish to bait
Speaker 1: in that I s P pond. I'll explain more when
Speaker 1: we come back from this quick break. A lot happened
Speaker 1: in the two thousand's, even if I can't remember most
Speaker 1: of it. We saw the dot com bubble burst, which
Speaker 1: had a major ripple beyond just the dot com companies
Speaker 1: themselves and affected related businesses, including the I s P business.
Speaker 1: We saw the move to broadband that meant that earth
Speaker 1: Link was going to lose subscribers even as it was
Speaker 1: adding more broadband services or partnering with other companies that
Speaker 1: did the same. In two thousand five, while earth Link
Speaker 1: would add some broadband customers. The balance was out of
Speaker 1: whack when it compared against the loss of dial up customers.
Speaker 1: Earth Link would lose seventy three thousand customers in two
Speaker 1: thousand five as a whole. And then a decision by
Speaker 1: the US Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, really hit earth
Speaker 1: Link hard. The decision gave telecommunications companies the right to
Speaker 1: stop leasing lines to third party DSL providers at wholesale prices,
Speaker 1: you know, like earth Link. So previously these companies were compelled,
Speaker 1: they were regulated to offer those wholesale lease rates to
Speaker 1: third party I s p s. That's how earth Link
Speaker 1: built much of its business, at least those lines from
Speaker 1: these bigger companies at a lower rate and then resold
Speaker 1: them to customers at a higher rate. That was just
Speaker 1: the basics of the business. But the FCC decision and
Speaker 1: a subsequent decision by the U s Supreme Court the
Speaker 1: upheld It meant that the telecom companies were under no
Speaker 1: obligation to continue doing this. They didn't have to offer
Speaker 1: those lower prices top third party I s p s.
Speaker 1: In the short term, the telecom companies were agreeing to
Speaker 1: continue to lease lines to I s p s. So
Speaker 1: even though they weren't compelled to, they continue to do
Speaker 1: it because these I s p s were really big customers.
Speaker 1: But since the telecom companies were themselves starting to become
Speaker 1: I s p s, the writing was on the wall,
Speaker 1: right because the ideas, yeah, I'll continue to lease this
Speaker 1: to you at a lower rate, but meanwhile, I'm building
Speaker 1: out my own Internet service provider business, and once it
Speaker 1: gets big enough where I don't need you anymore, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna cut you off. And then I get a two fur.
Speaker 1: I get to sell to your customers instead of having
Speaker 1: you do it, and I get to squeeze you out
Speaker 1: of business so I don't have a competitor anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a little nefarious earth Links strategy to combat
Speaker 1: this was multifaceted. Part of it was to get into
Speaker 1: building out its own infrastructure to compete against the cable
Speaker 1: and telephone companies, but it was way behind on that front, right,
Speaker 1: Like I mean, after all, let's imagine that you walk
Speaker 1: into cookie Town, USA, where there are you know, a
Speaker 1: dozen top level cookie companies there, and you decide you're
Speaker 1: going to compete, but the cookie companies have already managed
Speaker 1: to buy up almost all of the ingredients needed to
Speaker 1: make cookies, and they have saturated the market with cookies.
Speaker 1: It would be very hard for you to make any
Speaker 1: uh in way into that system. Well, earth Link was
Speaker 1: kind of facing a similar thing, but instead of cookies,
Speaker 1: while there were cookies. Because it's the Internet, bad analogy,
Speaker 1: my fault. I'll go sit in the corner. Okay, I'm back.
Speaker 1: So earth Link also looked to launch its own cell
Speaker 1: phone business at this time and its own landline business.
Speaker 1: Essentially was trying to enter a very established and very
Speaker 1: competitive market. In two thousand five, earth Link helped launch
Speaker 1: he e O, which was another company led by you
Speaker 1: guessed it, Sky Dayton, the founder of earth Link. Helio
Speaker 1: was a mobile virtual network operator or m v n O,
Speaker 1: and like earth Link, like Boingo, this was another business
Speaker 1: that would run services on top of the infrastructure that
Speaker 1: was owned by other companies and sensing a theme here.
Speaker 1: The initiative proved unprofitable for earth Link, which would pull
Speaker 1: out of the arrangement in two thousand seven, so it
Speaker 1: was only part of Helio for two years. As for Helio,
Speaker 1: Virgin Mobile USA would acquire it in two thousand eight
Speaker 1: and would sunset the brand in interesting little side note here.
Speaker 1: Sky Dayton has this history of starting up companies and
Speaker 1: then stepping down a couple of years later. I think
Speaker 1: I mentioned in the last episode. He strikes me as
Speaker 1: the sort of person who really likes to get things
Speaker 1: moving and then hand that over to somebody else who's
Speaker 1: better at fostering and growing a company, and then he
Speaker 1: moves on to start something new again. But another part
Speaker 1: of earth Link's strategy to kind of fight back against
Speaker 1: these strikes that were against it was really getting started
Speaker 1: around two thousand four. It was the the bid for
Speaker 1: the opportunity to become the WiFi service provider of municipal customers, so,
Speaker 1: in other words, to become the municipal WiFi company for
Speaker 1: cities like Philadelphia. Atlanta was one as well, there were
Speaker 1: quite a few, and these were cities that were looking
Speaker 1: to create city wide WiFi service for citizens, the idea
Speaker 1: being that instead of using wired connections for everybody's Internet connectivity,
Speaker 1: maybe you offer a WiFi as well. And part of
Speaker 1: this strategy would prove to be a lot more thorny
Speaker 1: than earth Link executives may have anticipated. So the story
Speaker 1: plays out in much the same way across the different cities.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna stick with Philadelphia to learn what happened there,
Speaker 1: but just know that what happened in Philadelphia, uh is
Speaker 1: very very similar to what happened in other cities across
Speaker 1: the United States. The original agreement in Philadelphia would give
Speaker 1: earth Link access to city utility polls to mount WiFi
Speaker 1: routers to provide service to people in Philadelphia. And that's
Speaker 1: a big part of it is that the ability to
Speaker 1: access those polls is key for something like this, and
Speaker 1: you don't just magically get it. You have to go
Speaker 1: through a lot of bureau bureaucracy in order to land
Speaker 1: that permission, and it's expensive and time consuming. But this
Speaker 1: was part of the deal, and the arrangement meant that
Speaker 1: earth Link was to provide twenty three zones throughout Philadelphia
Speaker 1: that would be free internet hot spots. So it wasn't
Speaker 1: that all WiFi was free, but in these twenty three
Speaker 1: spots around the city, citizens would be able to access
Speaker 1: the service free of charge. Now, beyond those zones, you
Speaker 1: would still have WiFi coverage and citizens would still be
Speaker 1: able to access the WiFi, but they would have to
Speaker 1: see subscribed to earth Links service for Wi Fi internet
Speaker 1: for going a physical connection entirely, so you could, in theory,
Speaker 1: have a WiFi receiver in your home you pay earth Link,
Speaker 1: assuming you're not in one of those free hotspots. You
Speaker 1: would pay earth Link for the privilege of being able
Speaker 1: to connect to their network, and you would get your
Speaker 1: Internet that way. But a couple of big challenges made
Speaker 1: this way harder than either Philadelphia or earth Link anticipated. First,
Speaker 1: the marketing strategy was lackluster, and earth Link was not
Speaker 1: receiving as many subscribers for their service as they had projected,
Speaker 1: so they weren't getting as much revenue in to help
Speaker 1: support the initiative as they had planned for. But just
Speaker 1: as significant of that was that the company and the
Speaker 1: city discovered that in order to provide the amount of
Speaker 1: coverage needed to meet the terms of this agreement, earth
Speaker 1: Link was going to have to build out way more
Speaker 1: infrastructure and deploy many more WiFi routers than the initial
Speaker 1: plan called for. The project went well over budget, became
Speaker 1: a difficult thing to manage, and the low subscriber responsement
Speaker 1: that the whole endeavor was becoming very expensive. Gary Betty,
Speaker 1: the CEO of earth Link until two thousand seven, had
Speaker 1: been gung ho on the municipal WiFi initiative, but then
Speaker 1: he got sick and he passed away in January two seven,
Speaker 1: and the succeeding CEO of earth Link roll up, p. Huff,
Speaker 1: decided that it was a long shot to make the
Speaker 1: programs work from an economical standpoint, and so starting in
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, earth Link began to extricate itself from
Speaker 1: the various deals it had made with the United States
Speaker 1: cities to be the WiFi provider for municipal WiFi. Earth
Speaker 1: Links reversal hurt the company's reputation quite a bit. Cities
Speaker 1: like San Francisco had banked on earth Link being a
Speaker 1: WiFi provider, with the ambitious plan to offer free WiFi
Speaker 1: to all San Francisco residents with a deal that would
Speaker 1: see the city earth Link and Google were together, but
Speaker 1: earth Link's announcement that it was selling off its municipal
Speaker 1: WiFi assets meant that that plan had to be scuttled.
Speaker 1: Things got even uglier in two thousand eight when earth
Speaker 1: Link essentially gave Philadelphia an aulimatum, take the WiFi service
Speaker 1: off of our hands, or we will shut it down. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, earth Link was still maintaining and operating
Speaker 1: that network in Philadelphia. It had stopped building it out,
Speaker 1: but now it just wanted out completely. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, earth Link was still depending heavily on a
Speaker 1: dwindling base of dial up customers. The company had managed
Speaker 1: to cut operating expenses largely by laying off the marketing
Speaker 1: and laying off employees. There was no longer trying to
Speaker 1: attract new customers, so it was really just trying to
Speaker 1: hold onto the people it already had. The dial up
Speaker 1: customer base was getting smaller year over year as more
Speaker 1: people were making the switch to broadband, but by two
Speaker 1: thousand eight that rate of attrition was slowing down. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, earth Link would continue to lose customers,
Speaker 1: but the rate of loss was slowing down. So it's
Speaker 1: like it's like having your annual meeting and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: good good news, everybody, we lost fewer people than we
Speaker 1: did last year. It's kind of a hard pep rally.
Speaker 1: I guess it's not exactly the business model you want
Speaker 1: as the cornerstone for your company, but it's what they
Speaker 1: had in earth Link became embroiled in a multi party
Speaker 1: debate about the merger between Comcast at NBC Universal earth
Speaker 1: Link objected to the merger and campaign for the FCC
Speaker 1: to step in and stop it, or, if not stop it,
Speaker 1: to bring that idea of compelling companies to lease lines
Speaker 1: to third party i sp s at wholesale rates back,
Speaker 1: just as the telecom companies have done until two thou five.
Speaker 1: They're saying the cable companies never had to do that,
Speaker 1: but maybe they should, especially if you're having big content
Speaker 1: companies merging with provider companies. Ultimately, that plan did not
Speaker 1: work out in the I s P landscape in the
Speaker 1: United States. We become increasingly the domain of huge companies
Speaker 1: that would get even more huger as some of the
Speaker 1: biggest mergers in business history would follow. So this is
Speaker 1: where we see those giant I s p s become
Speaker 1: truly enormous, and we see competition shrink as a result.
Speaker 1: Now earth Links still stuck around. It held onto its
Speaker 1: customers as fiercely as it could. Revenue and income would
Speaker 1: fluctuate wildly in the two thousand's, with some years seeing
Speaker 1: more than a billion dollars in revenue, not not profit,
Speaker 1: but revenue, and other years seeing that revenue dropped to
Speaker 1: six million dollars, and then swing back the other way.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it was the acquisitions that helped earth Link out
Speaker 1: and gave it a really good year, but sometimes those
Speaker 1: acquisitions would lead to big pains. And in news broke
Speaker 1: that earth Link itself was going to be acquired. Another
Speaker 1: regional I s P in the United States called Windstream
Speaker 1: announced it would acquire earth Link for a deal valued
Speaker 1: that six hundred seventy three million dollars, and it was
Speaker 1: an all stock deal, and it also included Windstream assuming
Speaker 1: earth Links four hundred thirty six million dollars of debt,
Speaker 1: meaning that once you factored the debt into the deal,
Speaker 1: it was really a one point one billion dollar deal.
Speaker 1: Windstream had around one million consumer customers, you know, so
Speaker 1: non business customers, and earth Link had around six hundred
Speaker 1: seventy one thousand, according to press releases about the merger.
Speaker 1: But this was about more than consolidating that small market
Speaker 1: of dial up customers. Also, some of those customers were
Speaker 1: DSL or cable because both earth Link and Windstream would
Speaker 1: purchase and resell lines on other networks, uh not a
Speaker 1: whole lot, because it was hard to compete since they
Speaker 1: couldn't buy those lines or lease those lines at wholesale prices.
Speaker 1: They would have to mark up the price to make
Speaker 1: a profit, and that would just mean that you would
Speaker 1: as a customer, a personal customer, you would look at
Speaker 1: the different I S s in your area and you'd
Speaker 1: say like, well, I could go with a T and T,
Speaker 1: or I could go with earth Link. But earth Link
Speaker 1: actually costs more of a T because earth Link had
Speaker 1: to mark up the price in order to make a profit.
Speaker 1: Didn't make much sense. So the business customers were a
Speaker 1: really big part of this deal. It wasn't so much
Speaker 1: the consumers as it was the enterprise customers, as were
Speaker 1: the various tax benefits and other financial wizardry that's beyond
Speaker 1: my ken. So there are you know, reasons why these
Speaker 1: Windstream came in to acquire earth Link that are go
Speaker 1: beyond just we want access to their customers. The deal
Speaker 1: happened in the winter of Seen, and it led multiple
Speaker 1: tech websites and magazines to declare earth Link was effectively dead.
Speaker 1: But a little less than two years later, in December eighteen,
Speaker 1: earth Link would burst out of the grave, zombie like
Speaker 1: and call out for brains, which is my way of
Speaker 1: saying that Windstream would actually turn around and sell earth
Speaker 1: Link off again to another party, this one an investment
Speaker 1: company called Thrive Capital out of Dallas, Texas, and the
Speaker 1: deal was for a three hundred thirty million dollars in cash.
Speaker 1: So remember, I mean, that's a lot of money. Don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong, it's a princely some. But unless I'm
Speaker 1: doing my math incorrectly, it means Windstream spent more than
Speaker 1: six hundred million dollars on a company in stocks and
Speaker 1: then sold it for three d thirty million dollars less
Speaker 1: than two years later. And that's not even touching that
Speaker 1: four hundred thirty six million dollars of debt that earth
Speaker 1: Link had accrued. So that is that's a yikes. But
Speaker 1: earth Link does still exist. According to the company's website,
Speaker 1: it quote offers internet access, premium email, web hosting, and
Speaker 1: privacy and data security products and services to customers throughout
Speaker 1: the United States. Earth Link also has key partner relationships
Speaker 1: with several of the nation's largest providers, enabling the company
Speaker 1: to offer products and connectivity services available to millions of
Speaker 1: households nationwide. End quote, it still offers residential and business
Speaker 1: internet access. It has also partnered with companies like Norton
Speaker 1: to offer data privacy security options, and it all so
Speaker 1: offers digital marketing solutions to businesses. So it's a company
Speaker 1: that is pairing other services with Internet service provider services.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of it's it's sales pitches that yes,
Speaker 1: you can get I s P connectivity through other companies,
Speaker 1: but we are also providing these other complementary services to
Speaker 1: connecting to the Internet that will make your connection more better. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: we have seen crazy consolidation in the I s P
Speaker 1: market here in the United States. In many areas in
Speaker 1: the US, residents and businesses might only have maybe two
Speaker 1: choices in providers. Some are unlucky enough to have no
Speaker 1: real choice at all, particularly if you want broadband. There
Speaker 1: are still smaller third party i sp s here, they
Speaker 1: do still exist, like earth Link, but these companies often
Speaker 1: have rates that are pretty much the same as what
Speaker 1: you're gonna find with the big providers, and they are
Speaker 1: typically leasing lines off from those big providers anyway, So
Speaker 1: even though you are subscribing to you know, regional I
Speaker 1: s P A, they're still using the pipes that are
Speaker 1: controlled by the giant, multi multinational, multibillion dollar I s
Speaker 1: P company Mega Corporation. So a lot of people just say, well,
Speaker 1: why don't I just go ahead and subscribe with the
Speaker 1: mega corporation and cut out the middleman. Uh. And a
Speaker 1: lot of this ties back to the concept of net neutrality.
Speaker 1: It's a concept that has been battered pretty hard over
Speaker 1: the recent past. It'll be interesting to see where net
Speaker 1: neutrality heads next because we have a different administration coming
Speaker 1: into the United States. So I'm sure I'll be doing
Speaker 1: more episodes about net neutrality and talking about its ups
Speaker 1: and downs. Uh. That's something I'm looking forward to. But
Speaker 1: we have now come to the close of earth Links story,
Speaker 1: and I hope that this was interesting to you. I
Speaker 1: know that I use this story really to talk about
Speaker 1: a lot of other stuff, like how dial up modems work,
Speaker 1: how cable modems work, how DSL works. But that's kind
Speaker 1: of the way I like to sneak in the tech
Speaker 1: information is through the context of a bigger story, and
Speaker 1: all of those elements were incredibly important parts of earth
Speaker 1: Links story as well. I plan on doing some more
Speaker 1: episodes about things like the consolidation of the I s
Speaker 1: P business and how that has affected, uh, the Internet
Speaker 1: in general and specifically within the United States, because I
Speaker 1: think that that's that's a really complicated story that we
Speaker 1: really need to take a closer look at. It's stuff
Speaker 1: that just kind of happened over the course of our lives.
Speaker 1: But when you start unraveling what the implications are, you
Speaker 1: start to see potential huge problems. So we'll probably do
Speaker 1: some more episodes about that as well. But those are
Speaker 1: my thoughts. I'm curious to hear what you guys have
Speaker 1: to say, especially if you have any ideas for future
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff, So reach out to me. The
Speaker 1: best way is on Twitter. The handle is tech stuff
Speaker 1: hs W. Let me know if there are any topics
Speaker 1: you want me to cover. You got any questions about tech,
Speaker 1: Maybe there's a trend in tech you would like me
Speaker 1: to talk about. Hit me up and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.