🚀 go-pugleaf

A friend is thinking about starting a small ISP in central Ohio. The
target market is people who want to have real connectivity (24x7,
static IP address(es)), and maybe provide other services as well, such
as name service, NNTP, news and mail feeds via UUCP, etc., but are
sick of the problems associated with ISPs now. (Oversold service, busy
signals at dialup time, harassment from ISP management about what
services are run on the machine, etc.)

Basically, the idea is to get a T1 (or several), divide up its use
among a finite number of people, give everyone a dedicated dialup
(28.8k, 36.6k, 56k) line (or ISDN, or whatever.)

There are no aspirations here to grow to the size of UUNet, just the
desire to provide reliable service to people who know the difference.
And, are those who know the difference willing to pay a little more
than for services so they don't have to watch autodial do its thing
for two hours when trying to pull email and news down on Friday
evening, explain how the in-addr.arpa zone works to their ISP, etc?

I think the market is there. I would certainly be interested in such a
thing. My ISP targets itself at the huge consumer market, and if I
could find one that targeted itself at the smaller techie market,
etc., I would at least like to take a second look. Am I the only one
out there?

-- 
C Matthew Curtin                MEGASOFT, INC                Chief Scientist
I speak only for myself.  Don't whine to anyone but me about anything I say.
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cmcurtin@research.megasoft.com http://research.megasoft.com/people/cmcurtin/