The Buddha is in the Details

This unconventional New York City ISP, founded as a worker's cooperative, acheived several notable firsts and continues to innovate today, almost 20 years on.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Associate Editor [January 22, 2004]

In order to serve the public interest, a telephone consultancy was founded as a workers' cooperative. Steve Gelmis was and remains the driving force behind the Public Interest Network Services (PINS). A friendly, outgoing idealist who physically resembles Rich Bader of Easystreet, he was born on Telephone Road (coincidence?) in Houston, Texas and lived for a time in a California commune but was educated in New York City in the 1970s at the city's most competitive public high schools, Bronx Science and Stuyvesant, where he met "the phone phreak crowd."

He gained a rapid, unconventional, and thorough education in the structure of phone systems. "I saw myself as like a little version of the folk hero Prometheus. It was the small guy against the system, a struggle for power between the independent and the incumbent."

Gelmis spent a few years at the most free-form college in the nation, Hampshire College. The educational philosophy of the college is that students should meet one-on-one with teachers and eventually develop their own major and curriculum. Details are available here. Gelmis jokes that Hampshire was "too structured" and so he dropped out and returned to New York City in 1979.

Back in NYC, he joined the environmental and homestead movements. The homestead movement in New York consists of people who occupy and repair unused buildings. The issue was particularly important in the 1970s and 1980s when landlords were perceived as burning buildings to drive out tenants and then selling the real estate. The landlords argued that New York's unique rental pricing scheme was so flawed that a burned out building was often more profitable than a building full of happy tenants.

His telephone skills were quickly noticed. "In those days, there was no equal access. Even using MCI and Sprint required an ID code. The non-profits had to adapt rotary phones to touch tone. Many had tiny little buttons on the mouthpiece."

The problem was that the buttons caused wrong numbers, adding significantly to costs. The problem was particularly acute at NYPIRG, an organization which made a lot of calls, many of them for polls and surveys.

"I suggested changing rotary phones to touch tone. I contacted the interconnection company and they wanted $300 per phone. I got angry and thought, 'who the hell are you guys?' I went down to Graybar and bought a touch tone pad. I figured out how to wire it, and then I realized that rotary dial phones have a round hole in the faceplate and I needed a square hole so I needed face plates for the phones. I was eventually able to convert the phones for about $30 per phone. After that, I started to get calls from other organizations and I was eventually drafted by the nonprofit community."

It's all about co-operation
With twin traditions of charity and poverty, there are many nonprofit organizations in New York, and a lot of work for them to do.

He founded a business, originally operating out of his home in Brooklyn, in 1982. He incorporated in 1984. "I didn't want to be an employer or a business man, so in 1984, my friends and coworkers formed Public Interest Telecommunications, Inc. as a worker-owned S-Corporation."

The rules were that any prospective employee (or comrade?) would work for a six month trial period, after which, if they were voted in, they would become an equal partner in the company. "In the first year and a half, we added two people, and two dropped out."

Gelmis says the ideology was not practical. He says he had assumed that part-owners would work hard, but, speaking carefully, says, "people have different ideas about what work is."

The cooperative redistributed its shares and Gelmis assumed control. Nowadays, the ideology of the company has mellowed to the point where it is willing to work with profit-seeking companies. "I was never against working with commercial organizations, but my network was with nonprofits, and I relied on word of mouth. Today, Wired magazine, for example, is a client."

Nevertheless, he saw his job as defending nonprofit corporations with limited resources. "I wanted to deliver to the public interest community. We've done some charity, but it's mostly about being an honest broker." Today, the company even embraces profit-seeking customers.