Netcom
Netcom On-line Communication Services was an Internet Service Provider that
was established in the early 1990s in San Jose, California. Originally it
was a service to allow students in the local area to access their university
networks via a dialup connection to a shell account on Sun SPARC based
servers. It served 95% of the San Francisco Bay Area.
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). The NetCruiser service became very popular and made
Netcom one of the leading Internet Service Providers by the mid 1990s. It
ventured into the business services market with its web hosting and hi-speed
connectivity products in early 1997.
Netcom On-line gained a lot of press when The Church of Scientology sued
them for copyright infingement. 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. Mr. Erlich was
charged with copyright infringement of the Church's sacred writings, and
Netcom On-line was sued by the Church because a BBS owned by Tom Klemesrud
was hosting the alleged infringing postings. This case caused an uproar in
the Internet industry at the time since Netcom didn't actually post the
content, did not know about the material being under copyright, and could
not control what customers could do with their service. Netcom and Klemesrud
evantually settled out of court.
In December 1995, Netcom Canada, a subsidiary of Netcom On-line was launched
in Toronto, Ontario with Ron Close 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 to become EBITDA positive.
In May 1996, Netcom Internet Limited, a subsidiary in the United Kingdom was
launched. In 1997, Internetcom do Brasil SA was founded as a joint project
between Netcom On-line and Itanet, a Brazilian telephone company.
On Oct. 13, 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 Enterprises Inc.
for $245 million in cash and stock. Netcom Canada was bought by was
eventually merged with Metronet (the first Canadian CLEC), and AT&T Canada,
with the combined enitity 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 acquasition, 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.
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