Time Warner Discontinues Newsgroups

Somehow, I missed the news that Time Warner was discontinuing Usenet Newsgroups for their broadband accounts on June 23, 2008.

So to my surprise, last week, I loaded up my Agent Newsgroup reader program, and couldn’t access any newsgroups.

In case you don’t know what Usenet Newsgroups are, it’s a pre-websites, different area of the Internet where people post messages, pictures, video and music on a “forum” like format.  The only difference is, unlike websites, there’s no “owner” of these newsgroups.  You can find newsgroups that deal with every topic conceivable, from hobbies, politics, technical issues, all the way to, of course, porn.  Or pr0n, as it is known to Internet savvy people.

So I guess with gas prices rising, Time Warner had to cut some fat to help balance their checkbooks, and getting rid of their Newsgroup servers must be their way to do that.

After looking around the Internet for the best newsgroup service, I came upon Giganews.com.  All the reviews had this service highly rated, in speed, price, and service.  It’s not the cheapest, but cheap and slow is not what I’m looking for.

Another factor in my decision was they let you try it out for free for 3 days, AND a discount (50% or 20% depending on account choice) for Time Warner subscribers.  Free for 3 days and a discount.  Oh, this was a no-brainer.

Sign-up was easy and they accepted my paypal for payment.  As per the agreement, they haven’t charged me anything yet because it’s only been 2 days so far.  I’ve used the service and the speed is great and all the newsgroups that are important to me (read pr0n) are available on this service.

I’m not happy that basically Time Warner has raised their prices by eliminating services, but I am happy with my new Giganews account so far.