No AOL

undeadpixel

Banned
Any ideas on an alternate timeline where the United States government not AOL becomes an ISP. I know the internet was created by the US military in the 1970s but later on corporations like AOL and telecoms like AT&T got in on the internet. I am looking for an alternate timeline with a POD somewhere in the late 80s early 90s where the US government becomes an ISP and all internet access is either tax funded or subsidized and made cheaper. How would this make a difference, would it affect culture, politics, elections, would internet companies start up earlier, later?
 

archaeogeek

Banned
The US Military created Arpanet. The internet as we know it is mostly the result of university teams and CERN recycling the basic protocols they'd created for ARPA and building something civilian out of it. With admittedly better results imo.
 
No AOL means lower blood pressure for all those who try to unregister their accounts. I can feel my pulse quicken in fury as I remember the entire stupid experience.
:mad:
 

archaeogeek

Banned
The problem is that AOL was part of a mvoement; if no AOL: something will be in the vacuum. That was a period where major corporations pretending to be ISPs were actively trying to create their own little walled regions of the internet and limit access heavily. But there were more than AOL in that regard. The moment some of the major ISPs actually start providing real service, the early AOL era will end. Of course you could avoid it by simply having the openness aspect come through earlier, but it took a while for platform tools to be developed which non-techies could use without some education.
 
I doubt the federal government would start allowing general access, you'd somehow have to convince Congress, the DOD, the FCC or some other appropriate bureaucratic body that it would make sense to spend the money on this.

I *could* see one or two state governments, acting through their state university systems, making public access available as the internet first started to grow. If it happened, and this is unlikely, it would probably be limited to citizens within local telephone access to those universities, however.

Once the internet actually becomes more popular, some municipalities could start offering it as a 'utility' (like water, sewer and electricity). (That did happen OTL, but I think not until the 2000's)

Otherwise, if you just get rid of AOL, then Compuserve, Prodigy or someone else like them will probably take their place.
 
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