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I was involved in starting one of America's biggest ISP's back in the early 90's - I won't name which one, but it was #2 for a while - and I can say that things
by mmjaa 9y ago
I was involved in starting one of America's biggest ISP's back in the early 90's - I won't name which one, but it was #2 for a while - and I can say that things have radically changed from the way they used to be. But, I don't believe that the fact that "its hard" is a reason not to do it - I think we really need to return to the days of Mom&Pop BBS'es and locally-maintained and operated NOC's in neighborhoods that really need it.
Which is why I think its great that we have social movements such as Funk Feuer (https://www.funkfeuer.at https://www.funkfeuer.at) to look at today, point, and say "thank god for the kids!", keeping the original 'net spirit alive.
- ataturk 9y agoI worked at #1! The place all this went bad was when big cable and AT&T got into the game and flushed out all the rest of the competition. Comcast is a reprehensible company from top to bottom--the pricing sucks, cable tv sucks, bundling sucks, and their customer service SUCKS! So I won't do business with them and am relegated to crappy DSL from Frontier which also SUCKS, just not as bad as Comcast as a company. How did we ever get into this situation? Granted the ISP I worked at was mostly dialup at the time, but they ran a decent business with decent service. The Mom & Pop ISPs in the rural areas were so cool back then--real American entrepreneurs, which starkly contrast with the robber barons.
- baud147258 9y agoIf the Mom & Pop -- real American entrepreneurs -- had grew to national scale, would they have become robber barons? It is just a consequence of size or is more complex than that?
- ethbro 9y agoPublicly traded vs private. I.e. whether investors are okay with steady return or always pushing for profit growth.
- wslh 9y agoYour vision is great. The goal should be more ambitious at the social rather than at the business level.