The Subscriber Value of FASTNET

Reader discusses the state of the ISP market in Pennsylvania.

[Response to Subscriber Values from January 29, 2004.]

[February 6, 2004]

Hello:

I was reviewing your recent article on subscriber values—and I do recognize that concrete numbers are hard to come by, thus your narrative on recent major purchases as well as the historical perspective.

Two items I thought I'd point out.

It was my understanding that the USLEC purchase of FastNet included 15 to 20 thousand dialup customers as well as their 3000 enterprise leased line and hosting customers. FastNet started as a dialup ISP in Allentown 7 or 8 years ago and a couple years ago purchased a pretty fair sized New Jersey ISP—SUPERLINK.NET. FastNet stopped reporting their dialup numbers a couple of years ago as they changed their focus to business customers, but there should be a pretty fair number still there.

At the same time that FastNet was in Bankruptcy Court at one end of the state, Stargate was going through the same thing at the opposite end of Pennsylvania. I've seen very little written about the breakup of Stargate and the disposition of their 50,000+ customers.

I do enjoy your feature articles and the special insight that you continue to provide this troubled industry.

Thanks,

Allen Deckert
General Manager, PA.net

Thank you for writing,

We will correct the numbers for FASTNET. They are in the footnote of the press release we used.

With regard to StarGate, we can only track public companies. Private companies, or those whose stock is delisted, tend not to publicize much about their ongoing operations. This is a pity, because many growing, dynamic companies are also private (think of all the WISPs, for example).

Thank you for your concern, and for reading ISP-Planet,

Alex Goldman
Associate Editor, ISP-Planet