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1.  

   ISP or pipe?

   

   bob, Mar 20th, 2004 @ 3:56am

   
   

   Let's see. I'm on my, oh, fifth or sixth or seventh ISP - and I only picked the first one. The rest were mergers, buyouts, etc. where I had no choice or were tied to the pipe (e.g., @Home when I went to cable broadband). From what I've seen, unlike the situation with dialup, on broadband the pipe and the ISP are an inseparable package -- if I move from cable to DSL, I get a new ISP whether I want one or not. Given this history, yeah, I'd predict that I'll have a new ISP in a few months, whether I do anything to make a change myself or not.

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2.  

   Re: ISP or pipe?

   

   Bryan Price, Mar 20th, 2004 @ 8:28am

   
   

   Let's see. I'm on my, oh, fifth or sixth or seventh ISP - and I only picked the first one.

   I feel for you. I picked my first one over 10 years ago. Infinet.com got bought by Voyager.net. Of which we promptly lost the infinet.com web site (infi.net wanted, and got it, at the height of .com fever) and we got two whole weeks(!) to change our web address (it was actually two months, but it was an extreme shock, almost enough for me to change then). Oddly enough, my email address has not changed (to this day)! I still haven't figured out if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Then, Voyager.net filed for bankruptcy so that they could then merge with Corecomm. And now I find last month that Corecomm is filing bankruptcy so that they can be bought by somebody else!

   I moved to FL, and got cable modem access. AT&T. Who had bought out Mediaone, and set us up with mediaone.com addresses, only to have those changed to attbi.com addresses (forcefully) even though they knew they were being bought out by Comcast, which would likely force us into another email address change! I finally decided to buy my own damn domain and be done with it!

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3.  

   Switching ISP's

   

   Dave, Mar 21st, 2004 @ 5:03pm

   
   

   There are definite differences in ISP's, particularly at the low price end of the spectrum. It's only natural that when you discover your new ISP has sold your email address to Lower Slobovia, and your SPAM is in indecipherable characters, that you realize you need another ISP. There are good ISP's starting at about $10-15 per month, and they are based within the US!!! The churn rate would be even higher, and rightfully so, if people weren't complacent about the quality of their ISP.

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