i used to work for an ISP like that. there were tons of independent ISPs back in the dial-up days. ADSL killed most of them that hadn't already been gobbled up by the bigger national ISPs, because the infrastructure build-out was too expensive. we tried our own SDSL service by ordering alarm circuits to customers houses and co-locating our own DSLAMs in telco offices. it was expensive and couldn't be done everywhere we wanted to.
in order to remain competitive, my ISP had to resell ADSL service straight from at&t/sbc (they provided the line and terminated them over our fiber connection, so we would be the actual data provider and route customers out to the internet). they only allowed us to do this because they were forced to by the government as part of the AT&T re-merger. however, the rate that they sold us a DSL connection was higher than what they were advertising to customers in the same market, so even if we broke even on a customer, we'd still be more expensive than what at&t was offering. we couldn't compete on price and by then, cable speeds were already much higher than what ADSL could do, so many customers went from a dialup connection with us to ADSL with at&t or cable with comcast.
we started our own wireless service to avoid the middlemen, putting up big antennas on water towers in nearby suburbs and backhauling the traffic to us over t1s, t3s, and point-to-point heavy duty wireless connections. it was much more labor intensive, having to do directv-style truck-roll installations instead of just remotely activating a toggle on a customer's phone line like with adsl. maintenance costs were high, having to send technicians out all the time to realign wireless antennas. other ISPs would pop up and other equipment on water/cell tower antennas would suddenly degrade our wireless signal quality.
they're still in business, but i haven't worked there in 5 years so i don't know what their books look like. looking at their website, their cheapest ADSL plan is $27.95, and the same speed plan on at&t's website is $14.95. when internet service is a commodity, people just want whatever works for whatever is cheapest. they don't care about expert, local customer service, or high quality datacenters.
when internet service is a commodity, people just want whatever works for whatever is cheapest. they don't care about expert, local customer service, or high quality datacenters.
We had Cruzio in Santa Cruz, and from what I gathered they just resold AT&T ADSL. However, after the horrific experience with SBC / AT&T as an ISP, I gladly paid whatever extra they charged just to actually be able to talk to a person (which wasn't much anyway.)
in order to remain competitive, my ISP had to resell ADSL service straight from at&t/sbc (they provided the line and terminated them over our fiber connection, so we would be the actual data provider and route customers out to the internet). they only allowed us to do this because they were forced to by the government as part of the AT&T re-merger. however, the rate that they sold us a DSL connection was higher than what they were advertising to customers in the same market, so even if we broke even on a customer, we'd still be more expensive than what at&t was offering. we couldn't compete on price and by then, cable speeds were already much higher than what ADSL could do, so many customers went from a dialup connection with us to ADSL with at&t or cable with comcast.
we started our own wireless service to avoid the middlemen, putting up big antennas on water towers in nearby suburbs and backhauling the traffic to us over t1s, t3s, and point-to-point heavy duty wireless connections. it was much more labor intensive, having to do directv-style truck-roll installations instead of just remotely activating a toggle on a customer's phone line like with adsl. maintenance costs were high, having to send technicians out all the time to realign wireless antennas. other ISPs would pop up and other equipment on water/cell tower antennas would suddenly degrade our wireless signal quality.
they're still in business, but i haven't worked there in 5 years so i don't know what their books look like. looking at their website, their cheapest ADSL plan is $27.95, and the same speed plan on at&t's website is $14.95. when internet service is a commodity, people just want whatever works for whatever is cheapest. they don't care about expert, local customer service, or high quality datacenters.