SBC Yahoo! Dial is the
ISP that sprang to life after
Yahoo! bought/merged with
SBC Communications (who had, in turn, bought
Prodigy years before).
Prodigy Internet customers began receiving SBC Yahoo! Dial upgrade kits in Spring 2002 advising members to install the software and activate their new SBCY!D accounts because at some point in the future the old
Prodigy Internet service would be retired. Plus, installing the software would add all sorts of
fun new software for one's
Internet experience, such as
Yahoo Messenger and the
SBC Yahoo! Browser.
Members receive all sorts of premium Yahoo! services as a part of the $23.95 per month membership fee, such as increased e-mail box storage space, increased Yahoo! briefcase storage, and other such perks. The service also offers a number of additional premium options, such as game leagues and stock market quotes.
The SBC Yahoo! Browser itself is based on Microsoft Internet Explorer, however it has enough minor differences in it to break most webpages and cause websites that block access to non-IE browsers to kick the browser to the curb. It's also a major RAM hog, causing my parents's computer to require twenty minutes to log into the service instead of the previous time of one minute when they were with Prodigy Internet.
Prodigy Internet customers that do not wish to dive into the Yahoo! experience but want to keep their membership can bypass the upgrade kit by going to a secret URL on the SBC Yahoo! Dial service and enter their screen name and password to convert their old account to the new format of account. Doing this will require users to reconfigure their own e-mail software, but this is a minor obstacle. Instructions for this action, however, are not given on the secret site. I would list the URL of this site here, however it changes quite frequently for some reason.
The entire SBC Yahoo! Dial concept screams of the fact that Yahoo! seemed to wake up one day and decide it wanted to be an ISP, so it bought a perfectly good service and tried to AOLize it. However, bypassing the Yahoo! browser and other "enhancements" results in an excellent ISP that leaves the user to his/her online travels.