ISPs?

On Apr 22, 4:53 pm, Davej wrote:
I was just wondering. Have all the ISP's gone out of business now that
everyone either pays their phone company for DSL or their cable
company for a cable modem?

Depends on the area. Mine, a small outfit, offers 56K for $60-80 a
year, or broadband 125KB/s VOIP DSL at $22 monthly. Verizon is still
my POTS provider, and when I briefly switched to Verizon for the same
services, undercut to a $15 monthly on Verizon's first-year
introduction, it was a nightmare. Billing (combined telco/POTs) was
invariably a mutli-paged quagmire, (and a separate rant), and DSL
issues were referenced to hours of playing circle-jerk in Verizon's CS
support center, based out of Pakistan.

But, that's why the law frowns on monopolies. I switched back to the
small local provider and have largely resolved my own issues by buying
my own modems (rock-solid ActionTec units), instead of using plague-
infested second-hand Zooms and no-name equipment the independent ISP
(the small ISP rents internet time from Verizon) were sending me.

A DSL modem has to be physically located within certain a distance
limitations to the signal source, Verizon's, of course, and the law
says I can contract an outside DSL subscription through a different
ISP, while having Verizon turn off all its services. The term is
called a "Dry Socket" and and will freak-out Verizon. That's how I
phrased it when Verizon was unsuccessful at switching me over to their
$100 monthly FIFO packaged deal, which supposedly would correctly
address how disgusted I felt after dealing their POTs billing or
support for DSL. All after they got wind of my intents, miraculously
switching me out of the Pakistani connection, entirely to Americans,
who proceeded to cajole me into keeping POTs landline services for one
third the price they'd been charging me for decades -- $30 monthly.

That's $9 now for a landline. If you're urban, out in the boonies,
your options are of course going to be limited to what businesses are
capable of investing into data-provider infrastructures. I'm not.

Paul wrote:
Our local FreeNet still offers dial-up, for around a $35 a year
"donation". If you don't have the money, they have some scheme where
you can donate your time instead.

I miss the days when the local freenet offered a free dialup terminal
account. It wasn't fancy, but when you just wanted to use it, it was there.

Jon

On 4/22/2011 3:53 PM, Davej wrote:
I was just wondering. Have all the ISP's gone out of business now that
everyone either pays their phone company for DSL or their cable
company for a cable modem?
What do you think cable or DSL providers are? You need to be more
specific with your question. Hughes.net provides amoung other things
dialup access as does netzero and I am sure that there others

--

Rick


Remember the USS Liberty
http://www.ussliberty.org/

Don't know about other parts of the country...but in Northern California
there are two independents I know of, DSL Xtreme, and Omsoft. So they
haven't gone away completely, just consolidated a lot.
--
Never was anything great achieved without danger.
~ Niccolo Machiavelli

"Rick" wrote:
Davej wrote:
I was just wondering. Have all the ISP's gone out of business now
that everyone either pays their phone company for DSL or their
cable company for a cable modem?

What do you think cable or DSL providers are? [.....]

They're carriers who also provide ISP services to some (not all)
of their customers.

*TimDaniels*

On 23 Apr 2011, "Timothy Daniels" wrote in
alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt:

"Rick" wrote:
What do you think cable or DSL providers are? [.....]

They're carriers who also provide ISP services to some (not all)
of their customers.

They provide Internet service. They are therefore, by definition,
Internet Service Providers.

"Nil" chimed in:
"Timothy Daniels" wrote:

"Rick" wrote:
What do you think cable or DSL providers are? [.....]

They're carriers who also provide ISP services to some (not all)
of their customers.

They provide Internet service. They are therefore, by definition,
Internet Service Providers.


Carriers do not provide the servers, just the connectivity to
the Internet. The ISPs provide the DNS, the mail, the
authentication, sometimes the NTTP (Usenet), sometimes
the Website and database hosting servers. The carriers
connect you to their nearest routers which put you on the
Internet so that you can access your ISP and other service
providers. Frequently, the carrier and the ISP are the same
corporation, but their functions remain different.

*TimDaniels*

Jon Danniken wrote:
Paul wrote:
Our local FreeNet still offers dial-up, for around a $35 a year
"donation". If you don't have the money, they have some scheme where
you can donate your time instead.

I miss the days when the local freenet offered a free dialup terminal
account. It wasn't fancy, but when you just wanted to use it, it was there.

Jon


If you don't give them a "donation", they close the account :-)

Paul

On 23 Apr 2011, "Timothy Daniels" wrote in
alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt:

Carriers do not provide the servers, just the connectivity to
the Internet. The ISPs provide the DNS, the mail, the
authentication, sometimes the NTTP (Usenet), sometimes
the Website and database hosting servers. The carriers
connect you to their nearest routers which put you on the
Internet so that you can access your ISP and other service
providers. Frequently, the carrier and the ISP are the same
corporation, but their functions remain different.

Seems to me that you can read it different ways. But to me, access to
the Internet itself is a service, so any portal to the net is by
definition an Internet Service Provider. Like your local water utility
for access to water when you turn on the tap.

Most commercial ISPs also provide other services like DNS, mail, news,
etc., but they all provide the most basic service, access to the net.

On 22 Apr 2011, Davej wrote in
alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt:

Well, obviously ten or fifteen years ago there were all these
different independent ISPs and each one had a room loaded with 56k
modems. Did all those ISP companies go out of business?

AOL still runs their dial-up service, doesn't it?

I kept an account with a local eastern Massachusetts ISP for a few
years, even after I got cable access and stopped using their dial-up
access. Didn't matter in the long run, though - they went out of
business in 2005 along with most others at their level.

My brother kept with a local free dial-up service in L.A. up until a
few years ago. I don't know if they still operate.