It was the small town local provider...KCOnline.
I think was what, 100 years ago now? WOW

Concentric

My small town local provider. Internet Texoma...

Quantum Link on the Commodore 64 at 300 baud!

Genie @ 1200 baud of blazing BBS glory.

Verizon

It was our local provider, I don't remember the name.

Juno and then switched to BlueLight(owned by Kmart at the time, haha.)

McGill University. That was before the web existed and the Internet was just a bunch of universities and government computers.

First ISP? Probably Washington University...but I'd been on bulletin boards (fidonet anybody?). I have, of course been on Prod(it till it moves)igy, GEnie (a real online community), and even AOL.

Anybody remember the Prodigy promotion where they included a nifty refrigerator magnet with the Prodigy logo taped right to the floppy in the starter kit?

sprynet

MCI in 1993. Bonded ISDN. I was spoiled, because I worked for them at the time.

I think there were about 10 websites total a year later. :D

My first ISP was a local one that catered to military personnel. It's hard to believe their 14.4 baud "state-of-the-art" connection speed was considered lightning fast at the time. I have only fond memories of them, since their customer service was also state-of-the-art.

Back in the early 90s we had AOL, on a 2400 baud modem. Then Earthlink on 28.8 and later 56k (and we were so internet connected that we ended up getting a second phone line so we could be connected whenever we wanted regardless of anyone's needs to use the telephone), and now Comcast.

klarno wrote:Back in the early 90s we had AOL, on a 2400 baud modem. Then Earthlink on 28.8 and later 56k (and we were so internet connected that we ended up getting a second phone line so we could be connected whenever we wanted regardless of anyone's needs to use the telephone), and now Comcast.

I retired from the phone company and back then not only did we have a second line for the computer and AOL at home but during the boom the company was selling second lines to customers like gangbusters. Then with the entry of DSL the second lines were coming out left and right but DSL was going in. For every second line we lost we gained untold (I can't guess) numbers of customers with DSL.

Ahhh! The days of SLIP accounts!

I started with FlashNet. Ahh the days of dial-up. Don't miss them at all!

My first internet capable computer was an IBM, and IBM provided connectivity bundled. My first personal email address was @ibm.net. Then we went to Time Warner, our cable provider.

Earthlink, it was cheap and awful.

I actually started with the old BBS's running a whiz-bang 300 baud modem. But the first commercial network service I tried was AOL. That lasted about 15 minutes. The first I used was "The Source". I was with them for over a year before they got bought up and shut down and the I switched to Prodigy. And were with them until they got bought up and started working my way through the el-cheap-o dial-up services until I landed in the world of broadband.

You kids don't know how good you've had it! When I was a kid, we had to attach hand-written packets to pigeons' legs. Our cross-town pings were good in the <10800000ms range! ;-P

Mississippi State University. I hated graduating and suddenly having to pay for internet myself.

Ended up with Zebra.net which got bought out a few times, ultimately ending up at Earthlink, before I ended up with Verizon DSL.

Road Runner.
I was a bit late to the game.

My first connection to the internet was WebTV... and then the glorious day came where I got my first laptop......... and used Earthlink. (Which I was actually satisfied with at the time.)

The local phone company -Wood County Telephone Cooperative. Dial-up connection, second phone line, etc. I still remember my first .net e-mail address. Before that, dial-up BBSs.

Delphi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi_online_service

My home Unix box connected via 56k modem with UUCP spoofing to decwrl. That email domain was formed in 1988 and is still the one I use.

wackyanimation wrote:Juno and then switched to BlueLight(owned by Kmart at the time, haha.)

Same here! I remember having to watch all those low bit-rate advertisements before the dialer would connect

I used a random Mom&Pop ISP that I could then connect to my Wildcat BBS and do what I needed to. :-) IRC's rocked back in the day as well.

I think this list is missing NoCharge.
The free internet provider that gave me 32.2 kps that would murder AOL's 26.5 kps hahaha!

I bounced through several of the free ones after I lost my University account at graduation, but the one I remember most fondly was Freewwweb. I also used BlueLight, Juno, and several of the other browser-banner ones. I can't remember which one was first, though.

BBS != "Internet Service Provider"

Which is what the question is asking BTW. I did the 300 baud mo/dem thing just like a lot of other folks, but that wasn't an ISP. Even ran my own BBS out of Twin Falls Idaho for a while (had a 2400 baud by then). Still, not an ISP connection.

Probably the first "real" ISP I used was Compuserve, but in the beginning, even they were more of a self-contained system (think GIANT BBS service).

Anyway, I liked this poll.. it's always fun to think back to the early days of all this annoying internet stuff.

P.S. The Cleveland FreeNET (connected through Case Western) was one of my favorites back in the day...

I first connected via an ISP called SouthWest CyberPort (SWCP.com)

I got more than enough 'internet service' at the office until the local phone co. (SWB/ATT, I think) began offering connectivity.

Freakin' crappy MSN.

I actually fondly reminisce about my Applelink account of MANY years ago.

beep boopboopboop beepbeep boopboopboop....screel screech screel...screech boing'a boinggg..screeech...Welcome!

Erols. They were good but then decided to not invest anything in their development and speed so they were then leap-frogged by everyone else in the industry.

Earthlink was the first to offer me "Real" internet connectivity. Back when I first got a computer, AOL was king, but they didn't offer internet access, just access to their stuff.