Talk of a Yahoo-AOL combo has once again heated up, but what becomes of the access business? Its final home could still be Liberty Media (NSDQ: LINTA). CEO John Malone told the FT that his company and Time Warner have had “limited talks” to swap the declining (but profitable) dial-up business in exchange for Liberty’s stake in Time Warner (NYSE: TWX). Of course, as Malone notes: “Time Warner still needs to divide the business.” Yeah, the process of splitting access and portal isn’t exactly “done” yet.

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The other party that’s clearly interested in AOL access is EarthLink, which has had some success in improving dial-up profits by cutting costs. Liberty, whose decisions are frequently guided by tax issues, has a totally different agenda: It wants to swap its non-cash generating (and declining) shares of Time Warner, to an asset that actually returns it re-investable cash. Of course, it’s not clear that Time Warner actually wants to or needs to sell dial-up. As CEO Jeff Bewkes has noted before, whether the company chooses to keep AOL’s future cash flows, or sell that off for a lump sum, is mainly about accounting, not strategy. Of course, if they do get rid of the AOL portal (either via Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) or someone else), ridding themselves of access would finally lay to rest the last ghosts the whole debacle.