When AT&T dropped its plans for its Network Notes service much of the blame for the service’s failure was being put on the fact that AT&T got into the game too early. The company announced the plan two years ago, before the explosive rise in popularity of the Internet and as a result Network Notes was to have been based on version 3 of Lotus Notes, rather than version 4 which was overhauled to feature tighter integration with the Internet. Also being blamed is the pricing structure that AT&T was planning: prices were to have been based on usage and capacity, but were to vary between $25 to $80 per user per month. When AT&T announced commercial availability of the service last August it said that it expected typical users to pay around $40 per month – compared with the $19.95 a month that AT&T is now planning to offer for unlimited Internet access. While Network Notes will not proceed in its current form, Kathleen B Earley, vice-president of AT&T EasyCommerce Services, has said that AT&T will still explore the possibility of collaboration with Lotus – the most likely option seems to be for AT&T to offer users access to Notes-based Internet servers. Lotus, too, is putting a positive spin on AT&T’s announcement, claiming that it broadly agrees with the latter’s assessment that the service has been superseded by the Internet – and claiming it as a vindication of Lotus’s strategy to provide closer integration between Notes and the Internet.
