America Online's slumping subscription growth reflects a variety of factors: One is inroads made by other Internet service providers, particularly Microsoft's MSN service. The latter, at 9 million customers, is much smaller than AOL but is also growing at a much faster annual rate of 13%. An additional factor is market saturation: With some 67 million U.S. households already hooked to the Net, dial-up access has become a commodity business that nonetheless requires heavy spending to attract new subscribers -- at the expense of margins.
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