How Come ISPs Aren't in Every Town?

I wanted to see if anyone could answer a question for me:

How come ISPs are in some towns, but not others? Especially the larger companies. Is it something to do with the city, the ISP, costs, etc, or all of the above?

Could anyone provide links to information that might explain this in more detail?

Thank you in advance.

- Matt

Sorry, but are you sure you understand what ISP means ?

Why aren't electricity companies in every town, or gas companies, or water.

You don't "have to be in a town" to provide a service.

Matt Geer - chief writer for PlugThingsIn.com who "advise" on things like internet etc.

Seems a very strange question for an internet enabled consultancy.

Or was your post simply an advert to spread your company name ??

Curious question - curious post.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

Seems a very strange question for an internet enabled consultancy.

Perhaps it's a reasonable question in the USA... not sure what relevance it has in the UK.

Post deleted by HTTP404

A bit of free advertising though, got to be better than paying for it.

None of the above!

BT is in every town and village.

In reply to a post by PlugThingsIn:

How come ISPs are in some towns, but not others? Especially the larger companies. Is it something to do with the city, the ISP, costs, etc, or all of the above?

Could anyone provide links to information that might explain this in more detail?

If you're talking about the UK then you need to understand that the ISPs aren't in the exchange, there are a few network companies that provide access from the DSL subscriber through to the network of the ISP.

The biggest is BTwholesale who provide connectivity services to 100+ ISPs and that works in almost every UK exchange. Then you have Sky, TalkTalk, C&W, and some others, who provide services in a lot of exchanges.

The main part of this site, and Samknows.com are good places to read me.

I do, but I failed to realize that this was a forum primarily (or entirely) focused on UK broadband. Here in the US it's not as straightforward as that, which is why I asked.

And I didn't mean "in town," but for example, Comcast might provide to City A, but it doesn't provide service to City B. I'm curious as to why not.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

Sorry, but are you sure you understand what ISP means ?

Why aren't electricity companies in every town, or gas companies, or water.

You don't "have to be in a town" to provide a service.

Not an attempt to spread "my name" at all. In fact, it really doesn't mean anything since this is a UK forum and my website is US focused.

The reason for using my site name is because I'm not the only owner, and I thought the other guys would like to ask questions and participate, too. That's why I used my name at the end of the post.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

Matt Geer - chief writer for PlugThingsIn.com who "advise" on things like internet etc.

Seems a very strange question for an internet enabled consultancy.

Or was your post simply an advert to spread your company name ??

Curious question - curious post.

I'm not looking for advertising. In fact, if the moderators deem it necessary I can create a new account using my name, or we can edit this one. Whatever will make others happy. My reason for using my website name is already mentioned above ^.

I just wanted to ask a question, nothing more.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

A bit of free advertising though, got to be better than paying for it.

I'll take a look, thank you.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by PlugThingsIn:

How come ISPs are in some towns, but not others? Especially the larger companies. Is it something to do with the city, the ISP, costs, etc, or all of the above?

Could anyone provide links to information that might explain this in more detail?

If you're talking about the UK then you need to understand that the ISPs aren't in the exchange, there are a few network companies that provide access from the DSL subscriber through to the network of the ISP.

The biggest is BTwholesale who provide connectivity services to 100+ ISPs and that works in almost every UK exchange. Then you have Sky, TalkTalk, C&W, and some others, who provide services in a lot of exchanges.

The main part of this site, and Samknows.com are good places to read me.

Just to remove any doubt that I'm trying to advertise I'll remove the link from the profile. I didn't think I was "advertising" anything, mostly since I'm wasn't trying to take advantage of my signature (which no one seemed to notice), which is what most spammers do.

Will remove it now.

In reply to a post by PlugThingsIn:

I just wanted to ask a question, nothing more.

As an attempt to give a serious response... the UK has a nationwide infrastructure provider (BT) which has exchanges in any town of significance and most ISPs use to varying extents, wasn't your provider (Bell?) split up into a lot of smaller, independent operators some years ago?¹

I wouldn't think that helped on its own, but add to it the fact that your towns tend to be a hell of a lot further apart than ours- not a major problem for voice, but trying to get even a low-speed ADSL signal down 50 or 100 miles of cable... and possibly little incentive to run a fibre when the other end might connect to a competitor?



¹ I'm relying on vague memories from a long-ago American girlfriend, so the details are hazy at best!

Edited by billford (Tue 08-May-12 22:48:20)

In my limited knowledge of the US market (based on my research to understand the internet infrastructure a little more) it would appear that you have regional telcos who generally prefer to keep traffic 'on-net' meaning from the socket in the customer's home all the way to their data centre which means they don't have to rent infrastructure from a third party.

To do this requires the construction of a large backbone network which does not make a lot of sense unless you are going after high value business customers.

In the UK, we have a smaller landmass and the infrastructure was initially built by the post office

Wasn't it AT&T, which was split up (forced by the US government) into the "Baby Bells" (Southwestern Bell, etc.), leaving AT&T with approximately half the market and the smaller Baby Bells responsible for the other half?

And I though 'Baby Bell' was a type of miniature red Dutch cheese

Edited by adebov (Tue 08-May-12 23:16:04)

In reply to a post by adebov:

'Baby Bell'

That's it, I'd forgotten what they were called

Original post edited with a bit more info (going by memory because I can't be bothered to Wikipedia it)

I can't remember either... and the g/f and I didn't spend a lot of time discussing the topology of the US telephone system