I cannot find one genuine Local ISP in Massachusetts.
Where I lived in Florida, I had a Local ISP. Not connected with any national provider like America-Off-Line and the rest. It was very nice and had great service. If I had a problem I could actually go to the ISP Office and strangle the technician, billing, etc, etc. ( I never had a problem, but I liked having the option if I did)
But here in mASS, no such luck. I cannot find one ISP run by a small business owner or a small group of people.
Have local ISP’s gone the way of the dinosaur?
Have they been bought by the evil AOL, Compu-puke, and the like?
If so, in IMHO, that really sucks.
I’m not sure why you’re looking for mom and pop ISP service, because it hold major disadvantages to the larger ISPs(we’re talking ISPs, not connection/content providers like AOL and Compuserve).
M&P ISPs had lots of problems from the start. They didn’t have the software, the hardware, the support, or the bandwidth required to be competitive. Connections that were up to speed were a rarity. My only experience with one was horrid. The software provided was lousy. It needed several updates to operate correctly. When it came to support, we had to wake the owner up at his house to do troubleshooting. All in all, it was not ideal.
These days, the best service can be had most times by your local Telco, or their competition. In my area, it’s PacBell(which I use), Concentric, and Earthlink/Mindspring. These people have the resources, money, support, TONS of extra bandwidth, Engineers and more. Those are all the areas in which M&P ISPs were sadly lacking.
Content/connection providers like AOL, Compuserve, and MSN are not there to function as an ISP, they are there to provide you a connection(lots of times through a 3rd party’s modems), and their content(chat, news, stock tickers Etc.). They are not there to function like a regular ISP. They have many ulterior motives to serving you a connection.
The M&P ISP revolution is over. These days people are all about surfing the web at a high rate of speed(56k and above), and broad bandwidth is all the rage. Cable modems and DSL connections could never have come about if the internet ran off of a T1 connected to 20 modems in a basement somewhere.
My in-laws use Meganet, which is a local ISP out of (I think) Fall River.
At my family’s machine shop, we use the Taunton Municipal Lighting Plant’s ISP (tmlp.com). Its pretty good, and as far as I know, its the only ISP in the Taunton area (including AOL…they don’t have a local number in the Taunton area).
As for the rest of the Commonwealth, I don’t know what is out there. I’d imagine if the backwards Bristol County area has local ISPs, everyone else must have them, too.
There are lots of M&P ISPs around and the idea that they are in some way silly and only offer disadvantages is just way off base.
The trouble was there were CRAPPY M&P ISPs run by people that didn’t even know what they were doing and just wanted the easy cash. A small ISP run by people that have the brain power to give support to customers has more advantages than disadvantages to the bigger ISPs.
It is easy for the smaller shops to offer 56K, ISDN and ADSL connections now. That is more than enough bandwidth for consumers. They offer more flexible terms for payment (try paying cash for your internet account with the big guys) and for taking care of mistakes (try and fix a billing issue with AOL).
You are more likly to get a very low modem to user ratio with a M&P then a concentric or Mindspring node as well.
To get back to the OP, do a search on MA and ISP and your city and you will come up with something I am sure.
That’s the problem. When something goes wrong I do not want to have to fight these beasts.
Small “M&P” ISPs always have someone to talk with on the phone. Not multiple layers of taped messages of tech support like “If your connection is spitting fire at your butt, press 6” “I’m sorry, we are unable to resolve this problem. Please stay on the line for the first available technician.” ‘CLICK’ dial tone.
“M&P” are people. No Bureaucracy, no conglomerate, no third parties. As far as cable is concerned, that would be great, as soon as the prices come down to $20 or less. I do not need that fast of a connection for $45 or more. (My area). Therefore, if you are right, my hunch was correct. They were (are?) being bought-up or run out of business by the bigger boys. The ones whose service and support suck.
I administrate a small local ISP. Yes, there aren’t many of us left, but we’re still around. We beat the national guys on several levels:
You get a real person on the phone for tech support. Hell, we’ll even send someone to your house/business if you’ve fried your system bad enough, and yes, we do that for free.
Pricing. We have less overhead (no big national advertising campaigns) so we can afford lower prices.
Flexibility. We don’t have rigid payment plans/time limits (though I think “unlimited” access is the standard now). We don’t require a contract or set up fees.
Are we getting rich off this? No. But it’s fun anyways
Many local ISP’s around here have been bought out by OneMain.com, who was in turn bought out by Earthlink. Now if you call for tech support, you get someone in CA who has no clue what’s happening here in IL.
I used to have a great local ISP which was recently bought up by a larger corporation. However, while my girlfriend experiences trouble with her accouunt bought after the buy out, my pre-buy out connection works as good as ever.
The local I used wasn’t crappy in any way. Great connections, never a busy signal, had a Usenet connection that other ISPs used to lease space on because it was one of the best in the country. My guess is that if you own a local ISP and you’re great at it, eventually you’ll get enough notice that a corporation makes you an offer you can’t refuse to buy up your customer base. In other words, if you find a wonderful ISP, eventually they’ll be too wonderful for their (or your) own good.
I have a choice of two local ISP’s as of March. I’m with the new one now. Nobody else provides local dial up.
I was stuck with the other one for a year and a half. They always oversold their capacity, and blamed everybody but themselves. Their usual wait until connecting? Try about 70 rings, and if you didn’t download something for about two minutes, they disconnected you. You had to download a large file in the background to stay on line. Telephone support was 9-5 on weekdays and never on weekends.
The last month I was with them, someone would hack their system on friday nights. You got unstoppable spam until monday when they came into work. The hacker used a list, that the ISP had made to mail us their garbage. Now their home page looks like one big evangilist’s page.
I’ve always used local ISPs. Simple 7-digit number, no need to wade through tapes to get to the dial tone at the end of a tech support call, and I am friends with the guy who runs the ISP I use. I can’t imagine buying time on one of those toy ISPs the spammers seem so fond of. I know how the internet should be so I’ll never be able to settle for less. [soapboxpos=off]
I am a big fan of local ISPs. I prefer the hands on approach in customer service (and technical support). Also, the thought that I am putting my money towards development of my community in technology and communication infrastructure makes me happy.
Check out http://www.prcn.org for a good solid local ISP in Canada … a great success story.
I’ve always had great luck with my local ISP. Here in Tallahassee, FL, there are an array of local and national ISPs. Mine is Network Tallahassee. It’s run from a strip mall about a mile from my house, and it’s locally owned. They offer 56K connections at $15/month, and ISDN and DSL for just a little more. They’re service is flawless, and in 3 years, they have had 1 service interruption (thanks to a lightning strike). Even then, they put together a backup system and had it all up again within a day.
Not only do they offer all this, but if someone tells them you recommended them for service, you get 10% off the regular price. Get 10 people to join, and you’ve got free access. Occasionally, they’ll set up a contest… get the most people to join, and win a cruise.
My take on disappearing M&P ISP’s (Tygre, please correct any wrong assumptions I make)
The Internet experienced a massive boom in the early 90’s. Big companies saw this, and got in on the action. Small companies that had a reputation and a footprint in the business got larger. ISP’s need to “peer” with one another, i.e. have physical connections to one another to mesh the internet. This is often done at NAP’s (network access points) and at private peering locations. The nature of Internet routing (known as “hot potato”) causes larger ISP’s to carry a disproportionate amount of the traffic load from small providers. This makes the large providers leery of supporting too many connections to smaller ISP’s. Less connections means less peering points, and less peering points means a smaller presence on the Internet, less reliability and redundancy, and less of a draw for business accounts. The technical info above is correct, the assumptions drawn from it are my opinions.
That’s good guys. I have quite a dislike for M&P ISPs, it’s my opinion, and I stand by it. I don’t want to hear children crying, I don’t want to know about your sheep. Personally, I so rarely need any Tech Support that it’s not an issue.
I’ll stick with my major ISP which I have no trouble with, you take your mom and pop store.
A couple of years ago I used http://www.thelist.com to find out more about ISPs. It still appears to list every ISP in the universe, although now it looks like some of them pay a premium so when you look up an area code 10 are highlighted and you have to click “alphabetical listings” to get the full list.
I use Earthlink/Mindspring (actually, I have EarthLink and Mindspring…my sister uses one of them, I use the other.) I also have a local ISP account. It’s about $10 a month for unlimited use, a 10 MB web site with FrontPage extensions (important to me) and good connections most of the time.
I recommended this ISP to some friends of mine, who were relative computer newbies. They told me how they had problems getting a connection after they had to reinstall Windows, so they took their computer down to the local ISP’s office, and the ISP set up their computer there so they could get connected. That’s pretty cool!
You’ve got it pretty much. Along with buy-outs and fewer choices for T1 + access, it’s a lot harder to get started now. The more connections or hops you have to go through, the slower your connection and the longer it takes for data to get transmitted either way.
Erols has local access in Massachusetts. I was with them a few years ago and they were great in my area, lowest cost (if you sign up for two years) and free 24/7 tech support. I only dropped them cuz I found an even cheaper local ISP.
