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Asia Online back to drawing board again

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Asia Online is reinventing itself again, with a new head and a new business strategy. American Internet industry veteran Kevin Randolph has been brought in by Japanese technology giant Softbank as chief executive to turn around this troubled Internet service provider (ISP) and help it fulfil what once seemed its manifest destiny.

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Asia Online once had a future as big as the continent it was named for and which it hoped to conquer. One of the first ISPs to emerge locally back in November 1994, Asia Online, led by chief executive Philip Wong, even then dreamt of more: setting up an all-in-one news, entertainment and finance service catering to Asian Web surfers around the world.

Modelled after CompuServe, Asia Online planned to target users who wanted an easy-to-use service that avoided the chaos and snail's pace of surfing the World-Wide Web, and would be willing to pay for it - US$1 to download a news article.

Despite a $20 million from marquee investors like Softbank and Peregrine, Asia Online's content service hit delay upon delay. Meanwhile, rival ISPs such as Hongkong Star Internet and Netvigator created their own content services and steamed ahead in the race for Internet subscribers.

By the time Asia Online emerged with its first major, albeit scaled-down, product more than 15 months later last October, the complexion of the company had changed. Mr Wong was chief executive in title only, and would soon depart along with the cadre of executives he had brought in.

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And that product, a financial information service aimed at personal investors, suffered from terrible timing, launched as it was during the middle of the regional economic crisis. Nearly a year later, it has reportedly attracted only 100 to 300 paying subscribers and is practically defunct.

Enter Mr Randolph, recruited by majority investor Softbank, as would-be savior. His plan? To turn Asia Online away from content and towards providing telecommunications services. In contrast to Internet content, which has yet emerge as a true moneymaker, providing telecom-type services is a pragmatic, even proven, strategy, according to Mr Randolph.

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