Digex, Inc. was one of the first

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...

s in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. During the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compo ...

, its stock price rose to $184 per share; the company was acquired for $1 per share a few years later.

History

Digital Express Group, predecessor to DIGEX, was founded by Doug Humphrey and Mike Doughney in the basement of Mr. Humphrey's townhouse in

Greenbelt, Maryland Greenbelt is a city in Prince George's County, Maryland, United States, and a suburb of Washington, D.C. At the 2020 census, the population was 24,921. Greenbelt is the first and the largest of the three experimental and controversial New Deal ...

in 1991, offering

web hosting service A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that hosts websites for clients, i.e. it offers the facilities required for them to create and maintain a site and makes it accessible on the World Wide Web. Companies providing web h ...

s and Internet access. In 1995, the company raised $8 million from Grotech Capital and

Venrock Venrock (portmanteau of Venture and Rockefeller) is a venture capital firm formed in 1969 to build upon the successful investing activities of the Rockefeller family that began in the late 1930s. It has offices in Palo Alto, California, New York ...

. In October 1996, the company became a

public company A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) company can be listed on a stock exchange (l ...

via an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

. In 1997, the company was acquired by Intermedia Communications, a

competitive local exchange carrier A competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC), in the United States and Canada, is a telecommunications provider company (sometimes called a " carrier") competing with other, already established carriers, generally the incumbent local exchange carrie ...

based in

Tampa, Florida Tampa () is a city on the Gulf Coast of the United States, Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The city's borders include the north shore of Tampa Bay and the east shore of Old Tampa Bay. Tampa is the largest city in the Tampa Bay area and ...

. In 1999, Intermedia completed the partial

corporate spin-off A corporate spin-off, also known as a spin-out, or starburst or hive-off, is a type of corporate action where a company "splits off" a section as a separate business or creates a second incarnation, even if the first is still active. Characte ...

of Digex. In 2000,

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

and

Compaq Compaq Computer Corporation (sometimes abbreviated to CQ prior to a 2007 rebranding) was an American information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced ...

invested $100 million in Digex. In September 2000,

WorldCom MCI, Inc. (subsequently Worldcom and MCI WorldCom) was a telecommunications company. For a time, it was the second largest long-distance telephone company in the United States, after AT&T. Worldcom grew largely by acquiring other telecommunic ...

acquired Intermedia Communications and gained a majority stake in Digex. In 2003, WorldCom acquired the remainder of the company. Verizon acquired Worldcom in 2006 and integrated the company into

Verizon Business Verizon Business (formerly known as Verizon Enterprise Solutions) is a division of Verizon Communications based in Basking Ridge, New Jersey that provides services and products for Verizon's business and government clients around the world. It ...

Streaming media

In 1995, Digex launched ISP-TV, a network of linked

CU-SeeMe CU-SeeMe is an Internet videoconferencing client. CU-SeeMe can make point to point video calls without a server or make multi-point calls through server software first called a "reflector" and later called a "conference server" or Multipoint Co ...

videotelephony Videotelephony, also known as videoconferencing and video teleconferencing, is the two-way or multipoint reception and transmission of audio and video signals by people in different locations for real time communication.McGraw-Hill Concise Ency ...

servers from multiple ISPs to provide for large-audience webcasts via

streaming media Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content it ...

. In 1996, ISP-TV began producing original video content in one of the first "cyberstudios" in

Laurel, Maryland Laurel is a city in Maryland, United States, located midway between Washington and Baltimore on the banks of the Patuxent River. While the city limits are entirely in northern Prince George's County, outlying developments extend into Anne Arunde ...

. Shows included "Head" (a beer show) and "Meeks Unfiltered" with

MSNBC MSNBC (originally the Microsoft National Broadcasting Company) is an American news-based pay television cable channel. It is owned by NBCUniversala subsidiary of Comcast. Headquartered in New York City, it provides news coverage and political ...

correspondent

Brock Meeks Brock N. Meeks is an American investigative journalist. He founded the online publication CyberWire Dispatch in 1994 and helped pioneer the world of online journalism. At its peak, Meeks estimated that CyberWire Dispatch was distributed to more than ...

. Digex also streamed

Bud Bowl The Bud Bowl was a stop motion animated Super Bowl advertising campaign first aired in 1989, and sporadically during the 1990s. It served as an advertisement for Anheuser-Busch's Budweiser family of beers. It featured anthropomorphized Budweiser bo ...

during the

Super Bowl The Super Bowl is the annual final playoff game of the National Football League (NFL) to determine the league champion. It has served as the final game of every NFL season since 1966, replacing the NFL Championship Game. Since 2022, the game ...

for

Anheuser-Busch Anheuser-Busch Companies, LLC is an American brewing company headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. Since 2008, it has been wholly owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV (AB InBev), now the world's largest brewing company, which owns multiple glo ...

. In 1999 Apple hired Digex to stream the Star Wars trailer in QuickTime format. This industry first saturated the internet bandwidth at the time but proved that video streaming had a future.

References

{{Dot-com Bubble 1991 establishments in Maryland 1996 initial public offerings 2003 disestablishments in Maryland Telecommunications companies established in 1991 Technology companies disestablished in 2003 Defunct Internet service providers Defunct companies based in Maryland Dot-com bubble Greenbelt, Maryland Laurel, Maryland Defunct telecommunications companies of the United States Verizon Communications acquisitions 2000 mergers and acquisitions