Temporarily out of service

AOL used to be the king of the internet in the U.S., but its long slide began when customers started having trouble connecting to its service. More investment at the right time could have at least postponed the misery, but media attention instead precipitated it. In the CR, customers of banks, telecoms operators and internet service providers are no strangers to dropouts and breakdowns, but the advertising strength of the main players means that little attention is paid to it in the media. O2's email server can be down for days at a time because of too little investment for overcoming spam attacks, but rarely does even a small notice appear in the press. Nor have we seen much mention of the way users must sometimes wait hours to receive an SMS over the T-Mobile network. Without greater media scrutiny, Czechs will continue to overpay for underperformance from their IT service providers. [Czech Republic information technology ICT American on Line Time Warner United States]