Who was your first ISP?

no_sleep_til · 16 May 2021 at 03:14

Libertysurf (that was at the beginning of 2000). it was a basic arrangement: buy the CD for $20 and you got from 18:00 until 08:00 free access. then later on they changed the system and you could pay a bit more and have 24/7 access. dial-up though. i think they were eventually bought out by Orange.

i tried Freeserve after them, then BT for the ADSL in 2k4 i think. and have been with BT ever since

Caged · 16 May 2021 at 12:11

BT Internet dial-up, first broadband provider was Pipex.

Efour · 16 May 2021 at 12:26

56k was probably Freeserve, although i used everything and everyone inc 0800 and Wireplay if i was playing on Wireplay servers for example.
ADSL was with a company called Nildram..
Cable Modem from Cable and wireless, the guys that owned the network before Virgin media swallowed everything.

HangTime · 17 May 2021 at 01:09

At uni we had JANET (still around), at home technically I think the first ISP was Lineone (still around as TalkTalk) but that was only really to just get online via a CD, I then signed up Barrysworld (defunct) straight away. Also used Nildram (now TalkTalk) and Netgames (dead) as pay per minute ISPs.
Various freephone ISPs including BT Internet (still here), Ezsurf (can't remember the trading name, went bust, not surprising really with a £27 lifetime fee lol), a shared RedHotAnt account (also went bust, they were £50 for life iirc), Xstream (someone I knew made a little app to constantly redial on ISDN much faster than Windows DUN could, they are dead) and AOL. Back then around the turn of the millennium there was a crazy land grab with all sorts of ISPs offering silly freecall access, just a bonkers business model as it was attracting all the hardcore users.

When I finally got ADSL I went with Nildram, switched to Eclipse (now KCOM) just before I moved out of my dad's house as it was cheaper.

Since then I've had NTL (now Virgin, good speeds but bad for gaming), Sky (still here), Orange (woeful, now EE), Entanet (still around, had good tech support), Vivaciti (still around) and BT. At the moment I have both Virgin and Sky meaning I can have a dedicated FTTC line for gaming and also redundancy if the Virgin line goes down.

watercooledman · 17 May 2021 at 01:11

Sure mine was freeserve

Rroff · 17 May 2021 at 01:25

Sp00n said:
BT unlimited with the 2 hour redial, 20m telephone cable across the landing from parents bedroom, the things we had to do

Used to hate that - but it was a huge saving money wise. Would have to remember to disconnect and reconnect just before jumping in a game online, etc. and hope I could fit inside the 2 hour window any gaming I was doing which was easier on some games than others. Fortunately things moved on pretty soon after that.

Nelly · 17 May 2021 at 01:49

Diamond Cable in 1994, I think it was a 56 kb dial up connection at the time, cost me around £100+ extra a month on my phone bill! Had some awful ping in 1999 when gaming in EverQuest, so switched to AOL and it was great, but switched back by year 2000 for 512kb broadband with NTL who bought Diamond Cable out, who is now Virgin Media, can't wait to get rid of them when I move, worse customer service going.

2004typer · 17 May 2021 at 07:47

I think my first proper ISP where I paid a sub was Pipex (sure I've got that right).

JohnStewart · 17 May 2021 at 12:06

I think mine was Lineone, who then became Tiscali. I also used Freeserve for a while. All dial-up access using a 33k US Robotics modem.

HEADRAT · 17 May 2021 at 12:27

PIPEX, I used to work there as well

tribz · 17 May 2021 at 14:54

Enterprise for me back in 96/97 I think. Connecting with an Amiga via AmiTCP

I ended up working for them also

pp111 · 17 May 2021 at 20:19

madman045 said:
Demon Internet, dial up with their turnpike software!!

Me too. Back in the days when British Telecom ripped us off horrendously and my phone bill was £900 a quarter.

bobuk · 18 May 2021 at 10:19

Cannt remember first one, but Screaming,net was second, Freeserve as well

the-evaluator · 18 May 2021 at 11:30

I believe Demon was the first ISP I had at home. The first ISP I ever used was Powernet at a friends house.

TheVoice · 18 May 2021 at 11:39

Freeserve. When they offered their unlimited dial-up it was revolutionary at the time, being able to use the internet any time of day for as long as you liked. The only caveat was that you'd get disconnected every two hours I think.

Shac · 18 May 2021 at 11:42

Me too. Back in the days when British Telecom ripped us off horrendously and my phone bill was £900 a quarter.

My worst was I think £880 the wife went ballistic

Efour · 22 May 2021 at 22:49

Yeah i was heavily into Ultima Online back in the day. Fresh out of Uni, no clue what to do with my life and a stream of temp jobs...
700 quid phone bill for 1 quarter. I wwas back at my Dads house and he almost exploded lol.... I was only getting earning about 100 quid a week !

I remember getting 512k ADSL and the bill just £30 quid or so...? I cant even remember

Elevon · 23 May 2021 at 09:27

First was CompuServe, followed by Simply online then Freeserve.

Rroff · 23 May 2021 at 09:33

Efour said:
I remember getting 512k ADSL and the bill just £30 quid or so...? I cant even remember

Can't remember for certain but I seem to recall paying £27.99/m for 0.5mbit ADSL.

I still remember doing the first test download and seeing 60+KB/s and pinging bbc.co.uk and getting 15ms - it seemed so amazing at the time.

ubersonic · 24 May 2021 at 18:12

First was Compuserve, then when the WWW became a big thing moved to Virgin.Net, then in the early 00s Bulldog DSL for that sweet award winning broadband. Sadly though Bulldog were bought out by Pipex who were then bought out by Tiscali who were then bought out by Talktalk (all of which wanted Bulldogs awards/reputation to try and claim as their own in advertising lol), and somewhere along the way they moved all the Bulldog customers onto their own garbage network (which stopped our static IPs working and cranked up the contention ratio to to hell) so I jumped to BT and never looked back.