Who was your first ISP?
- Thread starter metalmackey
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Soldato
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AOL on a 56k connection 
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Demon Internet on a 28 k modem. I found an old receipt of theirs the other day, 120 + quid a year, plus you were paying through the nose to BT to be online as well.
My phone bills jumped from about 45 quid a quarter to 350 quid a quarter back in those days when I got started on the internet. One of my friends managed a 550 quid quarterly bill, his wife was online when he wasn't.
30 quid a month for 1mb from Zen seems like a bargain now.
My phone bills jumped from about 45 quid a quarter to 350 quid a quarter back in those days when I got started on the internet. One of my friends managed a 550 quid quarterly bill, his wife was online when he wasn't.
30 quid a month for 1mb from Zen seems like a bargain now.
NathanE said:AOL (don't laugh, there were very few alternatives back then!) and then after getting kicked off I went to "Global Internet". Not longer after that FRIACO started getting going and Claranet released their "Free Weekend" deal. Then FRIACO went 24/7 and Freeserve were one of the best at the time for 24/7 dialup.
In between all that I was dabbling with hacked RedHotAnt and screaming.net accounts
Ahh RedHotAnt, I remember them. £60 for a year if I'm not mistaken. I had ISDN back in those days and it served me pretty well. Although they went bust (or whatever) within the year, I certainly got my money's worth out of it.
My first ISP however would have been Compuserve back in 1996 when I had a 14.4 US Robotics modem - for some strange reason I still have it too. After that, sometime in 1997 I was also on AOL, how depressing.
Soldato
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Demon. I didn't use the turnpike software though, really didn't like it.
From Demon I went to Freeserve (needed to save a few £ as a student) then BT Internet, ntl, and now Zen.
From Demon I went to Freeserve (needed to save a few £ as a student) then BT Internet, ntl, and now Zen.
Colloquium was my first ISP (before local rate numbers were popular) about six years ago now. Then I moved onto CompuServe (I liked the private RPG newsgroups they had) and then ClaraNet (when I got into online gaming with CS) before I moved to NTL.
RedHotAnt was a total con and the service soon went bust due to the amount of heavy users if I remember correctly. I was on that for a while before ClaraNet (probably my favourite BT-line ISP).
RedHotAnt was a total con and the service soon went bust due to the amount of heavy users if I remember correctly. I was on that for a while before ClaraNet (probably my favourite BT-line ISP).
Cuchulain said:
Same here, it was either Pipex or Demon at the time. And I remember I was one of the first to trial a 33600 connection speed.. Whoooshhhhh!
I did move to Freeserve for a while when it first launched, then came back to Pipex for broadband. I did have some ISDN service for a while but can't quite remember who it was with and I did have NTL world 56k for a year when I could get it.
Went live with talktalk broadband this morning. Thank goodness for hotmail and other generic email accounts or I'd have lost touch with all my friends a long time ago...
CompuServe back when you had an e-mail address which was something like 1000111,[email protected]
So easy to remember!
So easy to remember!
Lol [email protected], even though i havent used them for almost 7/8 years i can still remember it by heart. haha
They were my first ISP, before local calls were used, i phoned a national rate number, then had to pay something like 9.99/12.99 a month which gave me about 6-10 hours surfing, after that you had to pay 1.99 an hour , plus call charges. All on a 28k modem
Mine was virgin net, then claranet, freeserve (with the 0800 built into phone bill idea). Moved out at this point and had what I consider my best service/speed etc with Telewest, then a funky business class service cheap from my work now bulldog.
Still considering a change but it IS gonna be a complete pain in the ass to move away from bulldog and i'll probably be moving house again fairly soonish.
Still considering a change but it IS gonna be a complete pain in the ass to move away from bulldog and i'll probably be moving house again fairly soonish.
Freeserve PAYG 56k, then moved to screaming.net when I was spending too much on Freeserve (well, it was my parents bill that I wasn't paying for ) then when they went bust and were taken over by Tiscali, stayed with Tiscali. Tiscali messed us about with the billing so ditched them and went broadband with Plusnet.
I also had a PAYG dialup with Barrysworld and RedHotAnt, though I didn't really use them very often! Anyone remember them?
) then when they went bust and were taken over by Tiscali, stayed with Tiscali. Tiscali messed us about with the billing so ditched them and went broadband with Plusnet.I also had a PAYG dialup with Barrysworld and RedHotAnt, though I didn't really use them very often! Anyone remember them?
cyclopopcicle said:screaming.net
it was free after 6pm and free local calls after 6pm also
was a great way to get into online goodness
Same
ah the days didnt last that long but introduced me to the world of the t`internet.Think i then went to worldonline (bad choice) followed by gamesnet (RIP) vispa and freeserve until i eventually got adsl in 2003 (eclipse) how things have changed since then.......
