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A Domain Registrar Is Starting a Fiber ISP To Compete With Comcast
Jason Koebler writes: Tucows Inc., an internet company that's been around since the early 90s — it's generally known for being in the shareware business and for registering and selling premium domain names — announced that it's becoming an internet service provider. Tucows will offer fiber internet to customers in Charlottesville, Virginia — which is served by Comcast and CenturyLink — in early 2015 and eventually wants to expand to other markets all over the country. "Everyone who has built a well-run gigabit network has had demand exceeding their expectations," Elliot Noss, Tucows' CEO said. "We think there's space in the market for businesses like us and smaller."
Comcast is a behemoth that Google can barely take on. Tucows will not succeed in doing much, but over time, the efforts of Google and others like Tucows might compel Comcast to yup their game. At least in my dream. Certainly Verizon and their fios didn't have the balls...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Tucows had a reputation for some time as a registrar who was very spammer-friendly. Are they going to sell bandwidth to the spammers as well to get a cut of that action too? It is noted that they just managed to spamvertise their own services here on the slashdot front page as well...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Tucows to bind them
...except for all those Wahoos.
Seriously, it's a cool town, in a beautiful setting. We've been happy as clams with our Ting (also from Tucows) mobile service, and we've wanted for a long time to move back to the Virginia hills. Hmm...
But they will get trampled because the big C(unt) will run them to the ground as long as they aren't back to Title 2.
We live with DSL speed from a local ISP rather than deal with Comcast or AT&T. We'd be plenty happy to see a gigabit service from another provider!
Ah...Tucows...
Download anything from them and it will be loaded with extra adware with a very tricky sequence of clicks to not install any of it. Yes, this even means not agreeing what looks like a license agreement, but is actually an offer to install crap.
I'd probably take even Comcast over them.
on a long shot, im going to ask if anyone knows where to find the midi song that tucows used as an example in a tutorial for how to embed music in html. this is going way back to circa 2001, i tried searching for it a few years ago but no luck. that midi song was iconic to me in my youth when i was learning html and i really wish i could find it again for nastalgia sake. thank you to anyone who knows what im talking about :)
Tucows Inc., an internet company that's been around since the early 90s â" it's generally known for being in the shareware business and for registering and selling premium domain names ...
In 1997, Tucows was starting to get attention at ISPCON. Network Solutions _WAS_ the only registrar since General Atomics and ??? abandoned the domain registration game. Kim was at the top. Then the fees went from $100 to $70 and there was limited competition. Tucows was a competitor, but not a good one. I remember, because I did not choose them for my domain registrations. For those interested in Kim, she went on to ICANN and was a force to deal with when getting a /19. Those who don't know what a /19 is can just move on...
A dingo ate my sig...
I was hoping they were taking on Comcast.
Ever heard the ancient phrase "Comcast's enemy is my friend?" Fun fact: that phrase was actually created, in its original form, by customers who hated the same Comcast we know and hate today.
Tucows is still around??? I remember downloading crap from them in 1995. A quick google shows that not much has changed in the intervening 19 years.
Does their fiber service come with the signature bloatware as well?
(Side note, it's interesting to see internet companies that ostensibly have no reason to exist, yet are still alive and .. sorta-kinda-maybe-kicking today. Lycos for example. I'm frankly gobsmacked that they might wind up outliving their labby mascot. Or askjeeves, no quasi-witty joke needed.)
What does it matter what they put in IE. If you never use IE, you never see the toolbar.
Back in the day, IE was the only way to get to Windows Update.
"How you have fallen from the sky,
O Comcast, son of the dawn!
You have been cast down to the earth,
you who once laid low the nations!"
--Isaiah 14:12
How can it be a bad thing?
What does it matter? The toolbar you just installed is a computer program that runs non-stop in the background and has access to all your files, and access to the internet. Just a wee bit of a security problem right there!
and if my memories are right i downloaded cute ftp and a feature telnet client.
i bet the ass award is still an ad there.
Yes, I know; the joke about SV having shit service, but...Colleges are well wired, the towns around them are often not. Virginia Tech - the "electronic village" - that was supposed to get 10bT to every home over a decade ago - STILL has ISP-by-address. If you're lucky you get Verizon 7/768 AND Comcast, but many places have a single provider. And there is basically no fiber. The only competition I've seen is from a rural telecom who stopped by one day while running new service to a select few, and they could get you T1-speed service (1.5/1.5) for the bargain price of $120/mo. AYFKM?
The town looked into high speed but decided it was too difficult to exercise their rights of way and didn't want to piss off Comcast, so they scuttled 100Mb fiber to everyone. I think they may still be meeting once a month to talk about "high speed internet" but they'll never get anything done about it.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I vaguely recall their early tagline as being "The Ultimate Collection Of Winsock Software" before branching out to things like being a registrar.
Bark less. Wag more.
I live in a small college town. The college I work for has two 1GB lines going to it (I'm not sure what the other couple colleges have). The town itself is served by AT&T (I can get a whopping 3Mbit at my house!), CableONE (which is what I use - 50/3), and a fixed wireless provider.
It'd be awesome if someone would come in and offer a Google Fiber-like service (and by 'like', I mean 1GB for roughly $70 a month)...
bork bork bork!
...when the sheeple will realize that having gigabit fiber internet won't make everything faster....
they still don't realize it's limited to the speed of the sites they visit...
heh
wow thats a name I haven't heard in a long long time
Tucows has Ting cell service - which if you don't mind being on Sprint's network is quite a bargain, and the staff is friendly. They also have the Hover retail registrar - which refused to support DNSSEC for domains registered there, even if you run your own DNS, unless you pay them $500 per domain for their help with it. Management at Hover is hostile to users.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Like telephone systems, to prevent events like which occurred when telephony was first deployed in New York where many duplicative lines were strung throughout, we need only 1 fiber line per house and one utility providing fiber.
The incentive is, first come first serve, and whoever deploys fiber will have the absolute best pipe.
Meanwhile whoever didn't deploy, gets left in the dust with their pathetic limited network of just copper.
If we passed such a law, suddenly we create an incentive to deploy fiber right then and there, else miss the chance to another company that moves in.
As part of the law, any local bans on fiber either state built or provider built, or rules against building such as franchise agreements would be undone, as only the FCC or federal government actually has the legal authority to enact such restrictions in the first place, paving the way for companies to come in and build immediately when they want even if incumbents are refusing to.
myronmaysflashdrive.com