MCI, Inc. was a telecommunications company. For a time, it was the second-largest long-distance telephone company in the United States, after AT&T. WorldCom grew largely by acquiring other telecommunications companies, including MCI Communications in 1998, and filed for bankruptcy in 2002 after an accounting scandal, in which several executives, including CEO Bernard Ebbers, were convicted of a scheme to inflate the company's assets. In January 2006, the company, by then renamed MCI, was acquired by Verizon Communications and was later integrated into Verizon Business.
CompuServe, Inc. was an American Internet company that provided an eponymous online service, the first major commercial one in the world. It opened in 1969 as a timesharing and remote access service marketed to corporations. After a successful 1979 venture selling otherwise under-utilized after-hours time to Radio Shack customers, the system was opened to the public, roughly the same time as The Source.
MCI Communications Corporation was a telecommunications company headquartered in Washington, D.C. that was at one point the second-largest long-distance provider in the United States.
Pipex was the United Kingdom's first commercial Internet service provider (ISP). It was formed in 1990 and helped to develop the ISP market in the UK. In 1992 it began operating a 64k transatlantic leased line and built a connection to the UK government's JANET network. One of its first customers was Demon Internet which popularised dial up modem based internet access in the UK. It was also one of the key players in the development of the London Internet Exchange through a meeting with BT in 1994.
On Usenet, the Usenet Death Penalty (UDP) is a final penalty that may be issued against Internet service providers or single users who produce too much spam or fail to adhere to Usenet standards. It is named after the death penalty, as it causes the banned user or provider to be unable to use Usenet, essentially "killing" their service. Messages that fall under the jurisdiction of a Usenet Death Penalty will be cancelled. Cancelled messages are deleted from Usenet servers and not allowed to propagate. This causes users on the affected ISP to be unable to post to Usenet, and it puts pressure on the ISP to change their policies. Notable cases include actions taken against UUNET, CompuServe, Excite@Home, and Google Groups.
Richard L. "Rick" Adams, Jr. is an American Internet pioneer. He is known as the founder of UUNET, which, in the mid and late 1990s, was the world's largest Internet Service Provider (ISP). In 1997, his fortune was estimated at $500 million.
Tymnet was an international data communications network headquartered in Cupertino, California that used virtual call packet-switched technology and X.25, SNA/SDLC, BSC and Async interfaces to connect host computers (servers) at thousands of large companies, educational institutions, and government agencies. Users typically connected via dial-up connections or dedicated asynchronous connections.
Teléfonos de México, S.A.B. de C.V., known as Telmex is a Mexican telecommunications company headquartered in Mexico City that provides telecommunications products and services in Mexico. In 2014, Telmex was the dominant fixed-line phone carrier in Mexico. In addition to traditional fixed-line telephone service, Telmex offers Internet access through their Infinitum brand of Wi-Fi networks, data, hosted services and IT services. Telmex owns 90 percent of the telephone lines in Mexico City and 80 percent of the lines in the country. Telmex is a wholly owned subsidiary of América Móvil.
The NLnet Foundation supports organizations and people that contribute to an open information society. It was influential in spreading the Internet throughout Europe in the 1980s. In 1997, the foundation sold off its commercial networking operations to UUNET, resulting in an endowment with which it makes grants.
PSINet, formerly Performance Systems International, was an American internet service provider based in Northern Virginia. As one of the first commercial Internet service providers (ISPs), it was involved in the commercialization of the Internet until the company's bankruptcy in 2001 during the dot-com bubble and acquisition by Cogent Communications in 2002.
John W. Sidgmore was a corporate executive.
The Commercial Internet eXchange (CIX) was an early interexchange point that allowed the free exchange of TCP/IP traffic, including commercial traffic, between ISPs. It was an important initial effort toward creating the commercial Internet that we know today.
RCN Corporation, originally Residential Communications Network, founded in 1993 and based in Princeton, New Jersey, was the first American facilities-based ("overbuild") provider of bundled cable telephony, cable television, and internet service delivered over its own hybrid fiber-coaxial local network as well as dialup and DSL Internet service to consumers in the Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, the Lehigh Valley in eastern Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. areas.
Digex, Inc. was one of the first Internet service providers in the United States.
Vernon L Irvin is a distinguished corporate leader renowned for revitalizing businesses and rapidly scaling sales organizations. Recognized as the "2022 Most Influential Black Executive in Corporate America" by Savoy Magazine, Irvin recently joined Ariel Alternatives as the Head of Go-To-Market and Value Creation.
MFS Communications Company, Inc. was a competitive local exchange carrier that owned and operated local network access facilities installed in and around major U.S. cities and several major European cities. MFS also possessed significant transmission and switching facilities and network capacity that it leased from other carriers in the United States and Western Europe.
LayerOne, Inc. acquired by Switch & Data Nasdaq: SDXC, in 2005, was a U.S. private corporation that provides carrier-neutral datacenters and interconnection.
Unipalm was a U.K.-based company that operated between 1986 and 2003 that specialised in networking different computers together using TCP/IP technology and was an early promoter of internet technology.
Usenet, USENET, or, "in full", User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was established in 1980. Users read and post messages to one or more topic categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles a bulletin board system (BBS) in many respects and is the precursor to the Internet forums that have become widely used. Discussions are threaded, as with web forums and BBSes, though posts are stored on the server sequentially.
Verizon Communications Inc., is an American telecommunications company headquartered in New York City. It is the world's second-largest telecommunications company by revenue and its mobile network is the largest wireless carrier in the United States, with 114.2 million subscribers as of September 30, 2024.
