Earthlink
Earthlink is an American Internet service provider co-founded by Sky Dayton, Kevin M. O’Donnell and investor Reed Slatkin in March of 1994. The firm started in Pasadena, California, USA. Dayton was only 23 at the time but reports state that he was already adamant that there was a widespread need for a dial-up Internet service provider, also known as an ISP, that was user friendly and simple. He reportedly came to this conclusion after he’d spent a whole week struggling to work out how to configure internet access for his personal computer. For further information and pricing on phone systems, click here.
Earthlink History
The firm increased and was widespread enough to offer a dial-up service in 98 cities within a year. During this beginning period of Earthlink’s journey, it offered unlimited Internet access for a flat rate. We take this for granted now as the usual thing for an Internet service provider to do, but one of the first ISPs in the United States to offer such a deal. By 1996 the company had expanded to offer services for internet access to businesses. Businesses were able to go to Earthlink for web hosting and ISDN and frame relay internet access.
- The company’s rapid evolution continued. Only a year after their expansion into provision to businesses came the step to provide 56k dial-up access, which did its dial-up service twice as fast as before.
- Alongside this, Earthlink also provided high-speed cable internet access to its customers via a collaboration with Charter Communication.
- The company’s impressive growth saw it go public on Nasdaq in January 1997, and the progress only continued.
- A flurry of further collaborations was to come as Apple, Sprint, and CompUSA entered a partnership with Earthlink over the next year, which contributed to the fact that the company had reached the end of 1998 an impressive 1 million members.
Earthlink Features |
Price range |
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Speed range |
10 – 5,000Mbps |
Connection |
DSL, fibre |
Highlights |
Unlimited data, no built-in price hikes
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Earthlink Business Information
Earthlink broke another barrier in 1999 when it became the first internet service provider to offer high-speed internet access via DSL. This and the launching of Earthlink’s TotalCommerce service for small business Web hosting in the same year meant that the company were moving into the new millennia as the “second-largest Internet service provider after America Online.” according to The New York Times. It reached this size due to a merger with Atlanta-founded MindSpring, another American Internet Service Provider, in February 2000.
- The merger saw strides into new territory for the newly formed company with the EarthLink Biz Dsl service launch.
- Ensuring that their focus didn’t become overly urbanised, the purchase of OneMain.com meant that Earthlink captured a large share of the rural market previously catered to by OneMain and Rural Connections, which Earthlink also acquired in 2001.
- That same year saw Earthlink roll out offers of a two-way satellite service, which became possible after they partnered up with Direct PC and introduced a fixed-IP DSL service specifically aimed at the SOHO business market, which was particularly booming with the growth of the internet.
- Earthlink by now had a steady track record of growing through acquisition and continued this successful method of progress with the acquisition of low-priced dial-up Internet service provider PeoplePC in June 2002.
- Internet technology continued to change in the early 2000s rapidly, and it quickly became VoIP to play a crucial role in the extension of communication capabilities in both the business place and people’s personal lives. VoIP, which stands for Voice over Internet Protocol but is also commonly known as IP telephony, allows voice communications and multimedia sessions to be delivered over Internet Protocol networks, most commonly the internet.
- It requires a VoIP phone to connect to a VoIP service provider, which can be achieved through several methods. Earthlink responded quickly by launching Unlimited Voice in 2003. This was their very own VoIP phone service for broadband users.
- The growth of the internet wasn’t all positive, however, and people had to become ever savvier about ways to protect themselves from viruses, spyware and spam. Earthlink continued to make itself a crucial part of the internet market space by offering its members free tools to protect themselves from these threats.
To this day, Earthlink continues to over an extensive range of successful internet-related services. High-speed internet access, security tools, and web hosting are still on offer from the company just as they were twenty years ago. Things like secure premium email are now all available through the company too.
Earthlink – To Conclude
The company now provides more coverage than any other internet service provider in the US and has truly cemented itself as a giant of the internet industry. It is now owned by Thrive Capital as of 2019 but is constantly trying to bring new things to market, just as it started over 25 years ago. It holds many awards for customer and employee satisfaction and looks set to stay around for a long while yet.
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