NETCOM On-Line Communication Services, Inc. was an

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 privat ...

headquartered in

San Jose, California San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popu ...

Early history

Netcom was established in 1988 by Bob Rieger, an information systems engineer for Lockheed and Bill Gitow of System V. The company started off in

as a service to allow local students to access university networks off-campus. The original accounts were all

dialup Dial-up Internet access is a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP) by dialing a telephone number on a conventional telep ...

shell account A shell account is a user account on a remote server, traditionally running under the Unix operating system, which gives access to a shell via a command-line interface protocol such as telnet, SSH, or over a modem using a terminal emulator. S ...

s on

Intel 80386 The Intel 386, originally released as 80386 and later renamed i386, is a 32-bit microprocessor introduced in 1985. The first versions had 275,000 transistorsTandy PCs running

Xenix Xenix is a discontinued version of the Unix operating system for various microcomputer platforms, licensed by Microsoft from AT&T Corporation in the late 1970s. The Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) later acquired exclusive rights to the software, and ...

, with email addresses in the format of user@netcom.com. Netcom soon served 95% of the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

. They later expanded to serve other areas and replaced the Tandy PCs with equipment from Sun Microsystems. When first launched, Rieger was the only

system administrator A system administrator, or sysadmin, or admin is a person who is responsible for the upkeep, configuration, and reliable operation of computer systems, especially multi-user computers, such as servers. The system administrator seeks to en ...

for the company. Users would call him early in the morning to fix Internet access issues until he hired night staff. In 1992, the company was incorporated. As the World Wide Web became more popular, and users were looking for an easy way to surf the Web, Netcom released a Windows 3.1 based program called NetCruiser (originally it was to be called Internet Xpress, but there were legal issues with calling it by that name, so it was changed in the latter part of development - although the email addresses were still kept user@ix.netcom.com). The NetCruiser service became very popular and made Netcom one of the leading Internet service providers by the mid-1990s. Netcom also had business T1, Frame Relay, UUCP, and dedicated dialup services. In February 1995, Rieger turned the presidency of Netcom over to David W. Garrison, formerly of SkyTel. Under his direction, the company ventured into the business services market with web hosting and high-speed business connectivity products. On September 30, 2000, the shell account services were discontinued.

International growth

In December 1995, Netcom Canada, a subsidiary of Netcom On-line, was launched in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

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, with

Ron Close Ron is a shortening of the name Ronald. Ron or RON may also refer to: Arts and media * Big Ron (''EastEnders''), a TV character * Ron (''King of Fighters''), a video game character *Ron Douglas, the protagonist in '' Lucky Stiff'' played by Joe ...

as its CEO. Netcom Canada boasted a Canada-wide network, and allowed U.S. Netcom customers to access their Internet accounts via their network using either NetCruiser or any PPP dialer. It was the first Internet service provider in Canada to become EBITDA positive. In May 1996, Netcom Internet Limited, a subsidiary in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

, was launched. In 1997, Internetcom do Brasil SA was founded as a joint project between Netcom On-line and Itanet, a Brazilian telephone company. In 1996 the company called itself the world's largest ISP, with some 500,000 subscribers.

Acquisition and rebranding

On October 13 of 1997, ICG Communications announced in a press release that it had "entered into a definitive agreement and plan of merger with NETCOM On-Line Communication Services, Inc.". In February 1999, ICG sold off the Netcom's U.S. subscribers and other assets to MindSpring for $245 million in cash and stock. MindSpring later merged with EarthLink in 2000. Netcom Canada was bought by and was eventually merged with Metronet (the first Canadian Competitive local exchange carrier, CLEC), and AT&T Canada, with the combined entity acquiring the AT&T Canada name (later, in the summer of 2003, this entity dropped the AT&T name and rebranded itself as Allstream). Meanwhile, at the time of the MindSpring acquisition, Netcom Internet Limited in the United Kingdom became GTS Netcom, and in March 2003, it became part of the Viatel Group along with another business ISP, Cybernet. On January 12, 2004, Netcom Internet Ltd was rebranded to Viatel Internet Limited.

Controversies and issues

Kevin Mitnick

In February 1995, computer security researcher Tsutomu Shimomura monitored Netcom's network to track down an unknown attacker who electronically broke into his computer. While monitoring their network, he discovered the person who compromised his computer was Kevin Mitnick.

Scientology

Netcom became headline news when the Church of Scientology sued Netcom for copyright infringement. On February 13, 1995, armed police officers and attorneys from the Church of Scientology raided the home of Dennis Erlich, a former minister of the Church of Scientology. Erlich was charged with copyright infringement of the Scientology's Advanced Technology documents, and Netcom On-line was sued by the Church because a BBS owned by Tom Klemesrud hosted the alleged infringing material. This case became controversial among free speech advocates such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, EFF and Internet service providers since Netcom itself did not post the content nor have any involvement with it other than operating as a third-party hosting medium which did not actively monitor or censor their users' content. Netcom and Klemesrud eventually settled out of court.

References

{{reflist

External links

Netcom
(Archive) *

' Companies based in San Jose, California Computer companies established in 1988 Defunct Internet service providers