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| National Internet Service Providers |
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What You Need January 2000 • Vol.6 Issue 1 |
National Internet Service Providers Service & Accessibility Should Be Your Top Considerations | ||
 You already know that the first step you need to take before plunging into the World Wide Web is to find an Internet service provider (ISP). This is the company that charges you a monthly fee to link your home computer with the Internet. After configuring your computer for the Internet, you can use your phone line to dial the ISP—and voilà—you're ready to go online, explore the Web, interact with others, send and receive e-mail, and build Web sites. Before you can do all of this, however, you'll need to determine which of the ISPs is right for you. With more than 100 national ISPs vying for your business, and an additional 5,000 regional and local ISPs trying to lure you onto the ‘Net, making a solid decision about which one is the best can be nerve-racking. You might be tempted to pick one by drawing names out of a hat. Even so, making an informed decision is probably a better choice.  Becoming Global. Choosing a national ISP over a regional one has its benefits. First of all, you can count on a certain degree of reliability with a national ISP. Plus, you can feel reasonably sure that a national ISP is investing its time and technology in connecting its customers to the Internet, whereas a local ISP might be no more than a hacker running the service out of his or her basement. That's not to say that all national ISPs are reliable and long lasting or that all local ISPs are bad. What national ISPs have in their favor, however, is accessibility. They tend to be easy to find, no matter where you live.
More importantly, you don't want to get stuck with an extra bill for long distance phone calls for connecting to an ISP. This is fine if you are the sort of Internet user who connects once a week to see if your grandparents have sent an e-mail. But if you're like most people who are drawn to the online world, you'll be using your account much more often. You could be saddled with as much as 10 cents per minute in extra dial-up fees just because you live in a different location than your ISP. And don't let the presence of a toll-free number fool you. It might look like a harmless 800 number, but some ISPs impress a surcharge in excess of $5 an hour. Scour the fine print pertaining to connection costs before you agree to any contract. Still, we must admit, national ISPs are not without their troubles. Because companies, such as CompuServe and AT&T, have such a high visibility, and for the same connection reasons just mentioned, many people opt to use them instead of local or regional Internet providers. As a result, many national ISPs become jammed with other Web surfers, making your online experience (especially during high-traffic times, such as in the evenings or on weekends) take hours longer than you anticipated. That is, if you can even connect to the Internet at all. You may not even be able to dial in because so many people are ringing the same number. This is called the modem-to-user ratio, and the more modems that are available to each user, the better. So, before deciding on an ISP, consider that factor. You also run a higher risk of having your connection dropped during peak hours, which means you will have to dial in again. Have a magazine handy for those long downloads.
The EarthLinks vs. The AOLs. With so many service providers on the market struggling to procure and keep your business, competition is very intense. These companies are being forced to specialize in one aspect to stand out from the crowd and target a market niche. Some are turning their focus on businesses, others offer built-in high-tech tools for Internet super-users, and some put energy into making your online experience as hassle-free as possible. America Online (AOL), for instance, offers a totally different service from a provider such as EarthLink. AOL attempts to harness the information on the Internet and funnel it into a format that is easy to digest. If you've ever sat down in front of a computer that's connected to the Web, ready to benefit from the wealth of information that abounds there, only to find you have no idea where to begin, then AOL is for you. It attempts to solve the problem of electronic information overload by culminating the good stuff in one spot and presenting it to you in one tidy package. It bills itself as a "destination," meaning that not only can you use AOL to go online, but it is also the only place you should have to look to find anything you might want. Services such as AOL attempt to be all encompassing in this manner.
CompuServe hosts nearly any kind of forum you can imagine, on topics as divers as pet lovers and tips on how to find a job in health care. Prodigy, on the other hand, has been busy reinventing itself and churning up new services that appeal to the novice user and beyond. It would be nice if anything you ever wished to look at on the Web was contained completely in places like AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy, but it's not. The Internet has much more to offer outside the walls of these "commercial online services." Once you gain your online footing, you'll want to step beyond them and explore elsewhere on the Web. Luckily for you, these services realize this and now provide better ways to explore the Web at large. Services such as EarthLink and AT&T Business Internet Services don't mess with gathering information and holding it in one place. They simply provide a reliable means for going online. They also tend to beef up customer service, provide advanced tools for building Web sites, and leave the Internet exploration up to the experienced user. Best Bets For Beginners. AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy Internet didn't get to be among the top Internet service providers by accident. The reason why millions of people subscribe to them is because they are so easy to use. They focus on the home user who doesn't know the alphabet soup of PPP and IP connections. They require that a user only have credit card and contact information handy for setting up an account and establishing an online connection. Once you're set up with one of these services, you have instant access to e-mail, news, magazines, and ongoing interaction with others. The Web can be an intimidating place, and finding all that aggregated content shaped into an appealing format can be as welcoming as a warm blanket. Therefore, choosing one of these providers is ideal for the new user. Beginners do well with these providers and use them as a training ground, but once they build up some expertise, they'll find the simplicity lost on them. Although AOL culls an impressive amount of useful information, it doesn't include everything. Prodigy lets you browse the Web at large, but it forces subscribers to use its own browser to do so, as opposed to one of the leading Web browsers, namely Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. Once you are ready to begin sculpting your own Web site, you'll find services such as EarthLink more useful because of their advanced capabilities. Still, there is no reason why experienced users should stay away from national service providers, either. In fact, they are useful for people who travel often and want simple and inexpensive ways of going online. Many services also offer tools for advanced Web use, such as for those who are interested in building complicated Web sites with advanced functionality. AT&T Business Internet Services, for instance, specializes in providing businesses with the framework needed for successful commercial Web sites. Finding ISPs. The ISPs mentioned here are the major players in the online world, but choosing the one that's right for you isn't easy. These opponents are in such an intense competition that it's difficult to conduct even a half-hearted search of national ISPs without tripping over the likes of AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy, or EarthLink. In other words, you don't have to look far to find lists of options. Narrowing those options down to one clear-cut choice is where you'll have difficulty. Chances are that your home computer probably came equipped with the software for AOL and perhaps CompuServe, as well. Many computing magazines come with either a CD-ROM or diskette for one of these providers, and if you can't find a starter diskette there, just wait for one to arrive in your mailbox (your physical mailbox, that is). Even your long distance telephone carrier is probably in the online provider business and has already sent you information about AT&T or MCI WorldCom. You'll find more ISPs than you can possibly research at The List (http://thelist.internet.com). This comprehensive site has more than 3,000 providers grouped by state, country, and telephone area code. At the very least, you can also find a collection of national ISPs listed in your local yellow pages.  by Monique I. Cuvelier
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