Aug. 28, 2001 - As a part of SBC's strategic relationship with Prodigy, SNET Internet Services will migrate its DSL Internet and dial-up customers to Prodigy-hosted newsgroup servers. Our newsgroup users will see greater reliability with this migration. While these immediate changes affect only a small percentage of our customers - those who regularly access Usenet - our agreement with Prodigy will eventually bring many exciting features and benefits to all SNET Internet Services customers. Those features and benefits will include expanded information and entertainment channels; personal information management tools such as Bill Pay; CyberPatrol to protect children; SpamShield to reduce junk e-mail; Prodigy Instant Messaging and a 15MB personal home page.

What is SNET Internet Services doing to its newsgroup service?

SNET Internet Services will migrate its DSL Internet and dial-up customers to Prodigy-hosted newsgroup servers. As part of this change, SNET Internet Services will no longer offer some binary newsgroups. Groups that will not be offered are alt.binaries with some combination of the following suffixes: sounds, mp3, cd.image(s), movies, multimedia, warez, vcd.

How do I change my newsgroup settings?

Customers will need to change their server settings by opening up their newsreader software. For example, if your server was originally news.snet.net, your new server will now be news.snet.sbcglobal.net. This information is accessible at http://www.snet.net/support/newsgroups/.

Why are you limiting access to certain newsgroups?

After evaluating our customers' newsgroup usage patterns and the cost of providing the service, and in combination with the threat of copyright infringement liability, we decided not to offer some alt.binary newsgroups.

Which newsgroups are being eliminated?

Groups that will not be offered are alt.binaries with some combination of the following suffixes: sounds, mp3, cd.image(s), movies, multimedia, warez, vcd. Due to their nature, these are the groups that contain multi-part postings of digital files that are likely to contain copyrighted material.

I can't find a particular newsgroup. How do I request the addition of a newsgroup?

You can request a newsgroup by sending an email to news@prodigy.com.