15 years ago, every geek and his dog owned an ISP. Well, almost. But in today’s world of ISPs acting as content distributors, that number has dwindled dramatically. Andrew Colley at Australian IT tells us that according to research from iiNet, more than 200 small ISPs have disappeared in just the past year alone.
The report, which has measured the ISP market for the past three years, noted that the number of smaller ISPs around Australia has dropped from around 450 to just 250 in the past 12 months or so. The reason, as Gus over at Lifehacker points out, is that the larger ISPs have enough size and influence to be able to install their own equipment at exchanges, and can therefore offer better pricing and launch new products.
But given the fact that many of these closing ISPs began in a time where dialup was king and the benefit of having a local provider was in the fact that connecting to the net was just a local call, the demise of local ISPs is hardly surprising, even if it is a little sad.
[Australian IT via Lifehacker]
Daniel Weaver-Koenigs
Tuesday, February 1, 2011 at 11:06 AMI was using a small local ISP on TransACT cable with 20GB on peak unlimited off peak.
This cost me TWICE what ADSL2+ does, while admittedly getting me peak speeds twice what ADSL2+ can with my distance to the exchange, however the smalltime ISP just couldn’t handle a consistent connection. I can stream better on bigpond with half the speed, and with unlimited off peak the ISP couldn’t handle the bandwidth and it would be un-usable after midnight for anything but torrents.
Small ISP’s can’t keep up with the big guns in todays high bandwidth world.
Caesar Wong
Tuesday, February 1, 2011 at 1:06 PMWhich is why NBN will be a boon because it will make infrastructure a level playing field for big and small alike???
moloko
Tuesday, February 1, 2011 at 1:35 PMNBN will be sold off to telstra when Abbott gets into power.
Luke
Tuesday, February 1, 2011 at 2:04 PMThats even if the damn thing is built before he gets in.
Adrian Rundle
Tuesday, February 1, 2011 at 2:57 PMWhat do yo mean sold off? didn’t Rudd sign a $11billion contract with telstra for infrastructure before the elections anyway?
Steve
Tuesday, February 1, 2011 at 6:24 PMLol One.Tel.
Lensboy
Tuesday, February 1, 2011 at 7:51 PMWould love to see where these 11bio$ went. Australian internet infra structure can be sumed up with one word…PATHETIC. I dont know any other country that stilll has upload and download restrictions instead of unlimited flatrate plans. My friend in germany pays 49. Euros a month for a 2mbit line with fixed IP and ulimited traffic. I koved into a brandnew residential area on the gold coast a year ago and they didnt even have enough broadband ports available. As much as i love this country, in this respect australia is 3rd world. I had fewe problems gettin broadband access in vietnam and thailand on my scubadiving vacations.
Telstra needs to go and the infrastructure needs to be accessible by smallwr private companies that put money in the expansions.