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.
