Gawker: valleywag, rolla huff

EarthLink's choice: just fade away

Owen Thomas — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:00:00 EDT

Rolla Huff, the CEO of Internet service provider EarthLink, has made a choice many in Silicon Valley find incomprehensible: He's no longer bothering to get new customers. Here, the moment you stop growing — no, the very second your momentum falters — you're instantly written off. But the reason why EarthLink swung to a $54 million profit in its first quarter was simple. Its new dial-up customers — yes, people are still signing up for dial-up — simply weren't worth its while, and EarthLink stopped spending money to market service to them. Huff has also pulled the company out of the municipal Wi-Fi market, selling some networks to city governments and shuttering others. He's similarly disentangling the company from its Helio cell-phone joint venture, a half-billion-dollar fiasco. All of that doesn't leave EarthLink with much of a future.

Yet the cost of dial-up continues to shrink, which means EarthLink can continue to squeeze its current customers for healthy profits, possibly for some time to come. It's not innovative, not sexy. It's not why founder Sky Dayton started the company; it's not a business plan anyone from the Valley would propose, or a job an engineer here would sign up for. SoMa Web designers are offended by the notion that anyone's still accessing their sites through a 56-Kbps modem. EarthLink is not following the set pattern: Set the world on fire, or flame out fast. For the Valley's groupthinkers, the fact that EarthLink still exists, collecting monthly checks, is an idea that must burn.

EarthLink bails out of providing Wi-Fi to dirty hippies — and everyone else

Mary Jane Irwin — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 16:46:51 EST

San Franciscans may remember EarthLink CEO Rolla Huff leaving them in the lurch when he abruptly backed out of the city's municipal Wi-Fi project. Well, it turns out Huff, like any sensible CEO, doesn't want to lose money on a venture that probably will minimize shareholder value. The Internet service provider is cutting its losses and abandoning all plans to build citywide Wi-Fi networks. A shame. We thought it was just San Francisco's toxic stew of entitlement, anticapitalism, and government dysfunction that drove EarthLink away.

No free Wi-Fi for you dirty San Francisco hippies

Mary Jane Irwin — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 19:05:47 EDT

Google blunderkind Chris Sacca's plans for world domination are currently on hold. EarthLink, Google's partner in building a citywide Wi-Fi network in San Francisco, has delayed city officials' vote on the project's contract, until September, if ever. EarthLink CEO Rolla Huff is earning his last name by giving San Francisco the silent treatment. Not only has it stonewalled the city's proposal for a shortened contract and improved speed and security settings, but EarthLink now wants San Francisco to foot the bill. "The Wi-Fi business as currently constituted will not provide an acceptable return," Huff told Dow Jones. "We're going to look for municipal governments to step up and become a meaningful anchor tenant." Translation: Pony up! Of course, it has to be said: San Franciscans richly deserve this. The way we're behaving, there's no way we deserve free Wi-Fi. No wonder Chris Sacca and his partners are taking their squishy exercise balls and going home.