There are many of us (myself included) who remember the days when dial-up was the only way to get online, and there were two types of ISPs, the Corporate and the Mom n’ Pop.
A few examples from when I was living in Connecticut:
The locals were NECAnet and Cyberzone. The corporates were SNET and TIAC. All of them cost about the same price per month.
(As a small side note before continuing, CompuServe is officially no more. For those interested in ISP history, that’s a good read.)
The links to the ISPs above are all from The Internet Archive because not a single one of them exists any longer. Each was bought out/acquired, shuffled around a few times and either dissolved or merged into a larger ISPs customer base.
I’m sure more than a few of you out there can name off at least three ISPs from the late 1990s/early 2000s that are no more.
As to the question of whether a true Mom n’ Pop ISP still exists, the answer is yes, they do. And wow, did I find a doozy for my example.
BEHOLD… Spitfire Communications
- We’re greeted with a home page that has 3 different fonts and looks like it was designed in 1997. The title of the page is "Home". That’s it.
- The Downloads page lists software that is literally 10 or more years old. You can download AIM 5.1! Or ICQ 2000b!
- On the How Do I? page, every link for modem help is dead.
- Want to pay a bill online? You can’t. The Pay Online page links to a site that’s dead.
If you thought your ISP was behind the times.. well.. I dare you to find one more antiquated than Spitfire.
I’m sure Spitfire is a fine dial-up ISP, but you can’t deny the dinosaur-era site design and plethora of dead links.
This, unfortunately, is how most Mom n’ Pop ISPs are today. Woefully behind the times. Web sites antiquated beyond belief. And they probably accept payments in doubloons for all I know.
Do you use a Mom n’ Pop ISP or know someone that does?
Tell us your tale.
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I use a dial-up mom n pop ISP, due to my location, in Perry FL. It’s Gulf Internet. Before I share a big goof on their part, I will say that I switched from a corporate ISP to them because of the horribly unreliable service from FairPoint. Gulf Internet is a very tiny operation, but they have offered nearly uninterrupted service, except for stormy times here on the gulf coast.
So, last week I make a trip into the office to pay my bill because you can’t pay online, and I’ve lost my paper bill. It takes about 10 minutes, and searching through 2 different customer databases for them to find my information. Oh wait, they didn’t find me, they found my mom who also had service with them months ago. They finally find me, and they see that I haven’t paid my current bill due to a credit card company problem with cancelling several card #s from a certain batch due to security issues. I never pay with a card, and I haven’t paid the bill in question yet, that’s what I was in their office to do right then. They’re convinced that I attempted to pay with my credit card, but that it didn’t go through because of the credit card company’s error. No big deal, I pay with a check, and all is well. Phantom payments and accounts, but that’s not all.
I know someone who was getting service from them for 6 months before they got one bill. They signed up, got a username & password, got great service, but got no bill for months. When they did finally get a bill, there was no mention of a past due amount or anything. They just began to bill them as if nothing had happened.
Strange times in a small town.