According to their press release, wiiconnect 24 will still operate except for the services mentioned (email, weather, news, check out the mii's, everyone votes). But who knows for how long.It's gonna suck for games that relay on the WiiConnect24 service for their online. IE. Rock Band 3 and Guitar Hero (not sure which one it is)
I think it is a big mistake to alienate the customers. People have bought wii's, wii games, wiiware and wii accessories for a long time. To act like this is really thumbing their nose at the very customers that keep them in business. I don't plan on getting a WiiU. I had thought about it, but this pushes me over the edge...and not in their favor.
Thankfully there are alternatives for most of the services being taken offline (weather, news, and email could be done with the new web browser for example and perhaps the votes as there are such pages out on the net). The mii transfer, could be done with homebrew as well as we can export/import them easily with say savegamemanagerGX. Still as I said I doubt Nintendo would be hurting by leaving the channels on and would get benefits from the community using them. But obviously they don't see it that way.