COMMERCIAL INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER

Rick Adams who was in charge of seismo, one of the major UUCP sites in USA started UUnet, the first commercial internet service provider in 1987 with email as its primary service initially.  This was followed by Pegasus in Australia in 1989, followed by Internet Initiative Japan (IIJ) in 1991. Please refer the Section 6.1 of Asia Internet History – Book 1 (1980s) on further information on Australia including Pegasus, and the Section 10.4 of Asia Internet History – Book 2 (1990s) on further information on Japan including IIJ. Most major Internet service providers in Asia had a domestic backbone network with a leased line connection to USA and supported customers through dialup connections as well as leased lines. Many minor Internet service providers in Asia served domestic customers without having its own leased line connection to USA.

As soon as Coordinating Committee for Intercontinental Research Networking – Asia Pacific (APCCIRN) was formed in early 1990s, Commercial Working Group was one of the working groups which were created in 1983. APCCIRN was later renamed as Asia Pacific Networking Group (APNG) and meets twice a year; summer during INET Conference anywhere around the world, and winter somewhere in Asia. Please refer APNG.org website through Archive.org for further information on APNG including Commercial Working Group [APNG 1998]. The Commercial Working Group was the primary coordination body as well as a breeding ground for commercial Internet service providers in Asia. There were around 30 members from eleven countries or regions in Asia as well as USA and UN as of 1994 as follows; Australia, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, UN and USA. The Commercial Working Group span off as Asia Pacific Internet Association in 1995 to accommodate ever increasing commercial Internet activity along other working groups.

Some of the notable commercial Internet service providers in 1990s include the following;

   Australia – Pegasus, Telstra

   Hong Kong – Pacific Supernet (originally Hong Kong Supernet [Wong 1995])

   Japan – IIJ, KDD, NTT, Tokyo Internet

   South Korea – Dacom, INET, Korea Telecom

   Singapore – Pacific Internet (Pacnet)

Some of the commercial Internet service providers are startup companies, and others are traditional telecommunications service providers. Pacnet (originally Pacific Internet) may be a special case. It started as a research and education network called Technet in Singapore in 1989, and became a commercial Internet service provider in 1995. It expanded Internet services to six countries in Asia; Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore.

The next major move on the commercial service providers in Asia, Europe and North America is broadband service based on cable Internet services and telephone line Internet service with asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) technology for customer access of 256 Kbps or more, whereas the initial commercial Internet service providers offer dialup services and ISDN services of 64 Kbps or less for customer access. @Home started the broadband service based on the cable Internet from 1996. In Asia, several countries started the broadband services from the late 1990s. One of the first broadband services in Asia was provided by Thrunet in South Korea which was established in 1997 and started the broadband service with cable Internet from 1998. Hanaro and Korea Telecom followed Thrunet on the broadband Internet service with ADSL technology in 1999. Please refer the article on Korean Internet in IEEE Communications Magazine in 2012 [Chon 2013]. Other countries including Australia and Japan had the first broadband Internet services in 1990s. Eventually, most traditional telecommunications service providers in many Asian countries started to offer the broadband Internet services in 2000s. Starting from late 1990s and early 2000s, optical fiber communication technologies were introduced for the broadband Internet services.  They include fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP), and fiber-to-the-neighborhood (FTTN). They are generically called fiber-to-the-x (FTTX).  The optical fiber communication technology could offer higher bandwidth than other communication technologies such as cable and ADSL, and could offer bandwidth of one Gbps or more.

In 2000s, most mobile telephone service providers in Asia started to offer mobile Internet services with introduction of the digital mobile telephones in 2000s. With introduction of smartphones from 2007, the mobile telephone service providers became dominant Internet service providers along traditional wired telephone service providers.  In many countries, telecommunications service providers offer both wired broadband Internet service and mobile Internet service in the twenty-first century. There are one to three dominant telecommunications service providers in most countries now with telephone services and Internet services. They offer bandwidth of up to one Gbps for wired broadband Internet services and up to 100 Mbps for mobile Internet services in 2014.