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Can Bluelight Outshine AOL & MSN?

Techstination feature for Friday, June 14, 2002

Kmart hopes BlueLight will help it see green. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. Bluelight.com... the online service launched by Kmart two years ago... is hoping to win dial-up customers away from AOL, MSN and others... with bargain basement pricing. 8.95 a month for unlimited access... less than half the price of the big guys. Kmart's director of marketing and communications, Dave Karraker...

"About 81 percent of the country is still using dial-up over broadband so we think that there's really a market out there for us. And for anybody that wants a low priced solution... at just 8.95 a month... we think that we've got the winning combination of service, quality and price."

The service used to be free... .but that was in the days of the old Internet economy. And in return for the discounted service now... .users have to put up with a movable task bar on their screens...

"The Bluelight unlimited Internet service does feature a small task bar that runs across the bottom of your screen. That's movable, that's shrinkable and what it has on it are hot buttons that allow you to interact with your email, jump to the Internet Explorer window and also shop on Bluelight.com if you want to do so."

A bother maybe... .but not as bad as the pop-ups on the much more expensive AOL. But Bluelight is still a bit player in comparison with AOL and MSN... .it has about 200 thousand subscribers...

"And what that means is that if you sign on with us you're not battling 23 million other people to get to those local access numbers."

How's that for looking on the bright side. Bloomberg Boot Camp... I'm Fred Fishkin.