trip in the Internet Wayback Machine to the early '90s, Sherman! Before your phone company or cable provider ever imagined that you might want access to this thing called the Internet, there were small, independent companies like Shore.net, The World, and The Internet Access Company that offered to connect you to the Net for a monthly fee. You dialed a local phone number, and your modem shrieked a high-pitched greeting to the modem on the other end, eventually linking you to the Internet at speeds as fast as 28k, 33k, or a breathtaking 56k.
Now, with gargantuan operators like Verizon and Comcast offering Internet access at much higher speeds over DSL lines or the same coaxial cable that delivers ''Six Feet Under,'' small Internet service providers are feeling the pinch.
Never mind that the big guys seem totally indifferent to actually providing decent service to those customers once they sign them up. Ask a subscriber to Comcast (formerly AT&T Broadband, formerly RoadRunner, formerly MediaOne Express) whether she has enjoyed being forced to change her e-mail address more frequently than the oil in her car. Or ask me how much fun I've had talking to a series of anonymous call center reps, none of whom have a clue why it has taken Verizon more than a month to activate my DSL service at home.
Still, Internet users want ever more bandwidth. So we're flocking to the big guys and abandoning the independent Internet service providers, who typically can't supply anything other than a poky 56kbps dial-up connection or a pricey, high-octane T1 line.
The story of Vineyard.NET, the only independent ISP on Martha's Vineyard, is illustrative of the trends making life difficult for the smaller Internet providers that many of us used when we first went online.
Vineyard.NET was founded in 1995 by Eric Bates, a carpenter; Bill Bennett, an electrician; and Simson Garfinkel, an entrepreneur and technology journalist. Initially, their only competition on the island was The Internet Access Company (TIAC). Vineyard.NET decided to price its dial-up service lower than TIAC's, at $25 a month, vs. $29 for an account with TIAC.
Vineyard.NET established a reputation as one of the more sophisticated ISPs in the region, offering antispam and antivirus technology earlier than its competitors. The company, with just three full-time employees, is also known for personal service.
''You put a call in, and either talk with Eric or [administrative chief] Kathy [Retmier],'' said Jim Murphy, a longtime customer of Vineyard.NET who runs a software company on the island. ''Eric has even called me from his cellphone when he's been traveling. That just does not happen with larger ISPs.''
''You have to treat people right, because you run into them in the grocery store,'' said Retmier. Customers who are late paying their bills get a friendly but firm postcard from Retmier. ''We found that worked better than handing them over to a collection agency,'' she said. And when Vineyard.NET tried offering broadband access using wireless equipment, it wasn't unusual to see Bates clambering up to a customer's roof to adjust the antenna.
Vineyard.NET's customers understand they aren't dealing with a massive conglomerate. Most on the island like the fact that they don't live among Wal-Marts, Home Depots, or McDonald's franchises. (And the number of traffic lights on Martha's Vineyard remains at zero.)
''People on the island realize that we can't offer 24-hour customer service,'' Retmier said. ''If they have a problem late at night, they turn their computer off and call us in the morning.''
In 2000, Vineyard.NET's founders thought they had found the perfect strategy for cashing out. They had amassed a good deal of experience in delivering speedy wireless Internet service by trying to do it on the island. Mostly, they learned about which technologies and network architectures would not work. Vineyard.NET was purchased by a Boston start-up that had raised millions in venture capital to try to build a nationwide wireless Internet provider.
Broadband2Wireless paid $360,000 for Vineyard.NET, half cash, half stock. The start-up wasn't much interested in acquiring Vineyard.NET's tiny population of 1,000 dial-up customers; instead, it sought the expertise of two of the founders and quickly named Garfinkel chief scientist and Bates chief information officer. But Broadband2Wireless, which had raised $30 million in funding, filed for bankruptcy only three months after it launched its wireless service in Boston, leading Garfinkel to start referring to it as ''Broadband2Cashless.'' The company simply overspent on building infrastructure before it began attracting customers, and it used the same wireless gear that Garfinkel and Bates had tried to deploy unsuccessfully on Martha's Vineyard, failing to learn from the earlier experience of Vineyard.NET.
In 2001, Garfinkel reacquired Vineyard.NET from the bankruptcy court for $20,000. He, Bates, and Retmier had kept the business running through the bankruptcy, without pay. ''We knew that if we didn't, we'd lose all our customers, and it'd be worth nothing,'' Garfinkel said.
The group focused on repairing the company's technical infrastructure and reestablishing relationships with customers.
''I felt very strongly honor-bound to the customers who stuck with us,'' Bates said, sitting in the basement office in Vineyard Haven that serves as the company's headquarters. ''They'd stayed with us in good faith, and I wanted to stay with them. That was the single overriding factor.''
But in its new incarnation, Vineyard.NET has encountered much stiffer competition from Verizon and Adelphia, which offer DSL and cable modem access on the island. Vineyard.NET's dial-up customers are vanishing, and those who want to retain their e-mail address while buying high-speed access from someone else can downgrade their account from $29 a month, what Vineyard.NET now charges for its standard dial-up service, to $5 a month.
''I can't say that I understand the long-term economics of [Verizon and Adelphia] offering high-speed access at $30 or $50 a month,'' Bates says. ''They're probably not making money on it, but we do need to try to make money from what we sell.''
For its part, Verizon acknowledges that selling DSL isn't necessarily profitable on a standalone basis. DSL ''is not profitable on its own, but it allows us to bring more customers onto the network and retain customers,'' said Bobbi Henson, a Verizon spokeswoman. Most of Verizon's new DSL customers have defected from dial-up service, she said.
Bates said he realizes that it will be hard for Vineyard.NET to compete against Verizon and Adelphia to serve home Internet users, unless they are located in parts of the island that can't get broadband service. So the company is trying to do more big-ticket consulting projects for local businesses. One example: Bates recently designed and installed a network in the soon-to-open Mansion House hotel, located across the street from Vineyard.NET's office. It will allow guests with laptops to go online for a fee from their rooms.
But as much as residents of the Vineyard appreciate quirky, home-grown businesses that offer a personal touch, it won't be easy for Vineyard.NET to stay alive.
Independent Internet providers are ''facing extinction,'' said Matt Davis, a broadband analyst at the Yankee Group in Boston. ''Everybody agrees that broadband is an obvious replacement to dial-up connectivity. The cable companies and telcos can bundle services, and they've got the marketing advantage. I think it's going to be very difficult for independent ISPs to compete.''
In the technology world, we are still in the midst of a wrenching period of consolidation. That's crucial in a market economy, but we may not always like the results.
Kathy Retmier told me, in an e-mail, about a Vineyard.NET customer in his teens who didn't have the money to keep his account open. ''But it was a huge part of his life and education,'' she wrote. ''So we made sure that he could keep his dial-up going. He's in college now!''
Would you expect that from Comcast?
Scott Kirsner is a contributing editor at Fast Company. He can be reached at kirsner@att.net.
