ISP That Just Provides Connectivity?

strredwolf asks: "Isn't there a national ISP that only provides the protocol and dialup connection? No mailbox, no newsserver, no Web page. Just pure raw TCP/IP to your computer. Wasn't it $2 per month or so, with no ads?"

IANAL

[Anonymous Coward]

but I would have to caution you against using such a service. In my experience, these types of services are typically fly-by-night, and you end up losing your connection after a few months.

Regards,

Steven Woston, Lead Programmer
http://www.jjjjulius.com/net/index.html [jjjjulius.com]

I would love something like this

[Yowzah]

free email is all around, pop3 even, if you look; deja does newsgroups decent, why pay for all that? If I found a reliable one, I woudl be all over it!

Galaxy Internet

[TaylorCeres]

In the Northeast (AFAIK), Galaxy Internet (www.gis.net) provides unlimited dialup access for
$9.95 a month. I haven't had a problem with them.
I don't know of any bare bones ISPs though.

Not cost effective

[fliplap]

For the amount of money that it takes to give you that pop3/website/news it is more cost effective for them to just give it to you and charge $10-20 an month than to charge a much lower price and not provide these services. There aren't many ISPs that could stay afloat charging only $2 without some sort of ad revenue

Re:IANAL

[drix]

Just out of curiosity, what added insight would a lawyer provide to this discussion?

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Support

[def]

Hrm. $2 sounds well below the price point of where an ISP can make money. The largest cost of any account is support, not bandwidth or any of the other services you mention (which, as others have said, are cheap for the ISP to do simply because they are likely doing them anyway).

A single support call can easily wind up costing an ISP as much as a quarter-hour of person time, which is atleast the $2 that you specify. If people call more than once every few months (Even to address billing issues) there is no way this ISP is making money with costs such as power and bandwidth, even at extreme volumes.

Re:Support

[HerrNewton]

Why not charge per call, then?

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What do you mean by "national"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Arcor Online (www.arcor-online.de) provide what you want. But then maybe you're not in Germany. Of course, I can't tell from your original question. Who knows? Maybe you're an American.

Re:What do you mean by "national"?

[Tet]

Of course, I can't tell from your original question. Who knows? Maybe you're an American.

Indeed. The UK is full of providers that'll give you completely free internet access (remember, though, that over here you don't get free local calls).

Re:you must be one cheap mother fucker

[nomadlogic]

sorry most nike werkers would be excited if they were making US $2 an hour...it's closer to 30-50 cents an hour (US)

Prodigy is cheap....

[FashionTech]

But they are feature rich. Noone said you have to use their NNTP, POP3 or anything else. I think they are about $14.95/month. The only ISP that expects you to read email on the mailbox they provide is AT&T Worldnet. The morons at AT&T use your email to communicate to you concerning billing concerns. My conversation went like this: "Hello, Why is my Internet connection down?" "You're account is past due" "Why didn't you get in touch with me?" "We did, via your Worldnet email" "Oh yeah, its real easy to read when cancel my account!" ---> Make a long story short AT&T sucks.

Rationale behind the question

[strredwolf]

To answer a few of the questions:

* I already have an account with Erols. I want something cheap for my Palm Pilot that I can use in the USA. Don't need a e-mail box or NNTP or whatnow when I'm checking it off of my normal e-mail, and I may be using Erols at that particular time with my home box (tygris). Am I cheap? Maybe.

* $2 is a rough figure. Heck, $5 for just pure TCP/IP service is worth it. May be nice for those connections who just want to hang off of a modem 24/7 with a static IP, or have two modems and want an extra connection to help out with the routing.

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Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com." The purpose of that site was not known. -- MSNBC 10-26-1999 on MS crack

Re:Support

[def]

Though that is true, as long as you are still supporting atleast 1 service you are still paying people to do it.

Though I will admit plain old connectivity support has become much easier over the past few years, especially with shudder improvements in windows DUN.