I started an ISP with a friend (whom is still my business partner in another venture to this day) in 1997.

The hardest part of running an ISP was always the end user tech support. It was a never ending nightmare.

We offered fixing computers for free at the store but no one wanted to lug their machine down to get it fixed, so 99% of the time you end up spending hours over the phone trying to fix the problem.

The user is already frustrated because it's not working and after doing tech support for a long time you become very burned out. It's not a good combination for either party. Definitely the worst part of the job.

Remote tools hadn't really been invented yet so it was really an art form trying to decypher what the user was saying and what they meant -- then trying to explain exactly how to click / change a setting and try again... then, rinse and repeat. They usually had to hang up to try, then call back again if it didn't work.

Definitely not an ideal situation.

My brother and I thought about starting a local ISP in the early/mid 90s but had no real idea how to get started. A local musician started one and did very well for a while. Talking to him once about it was interesting. He said one of the hardest things he had to deal with was fielding service calls and try to explain how to "double click" over the phone.

>Connectivity was provided in partnership with established network companies, with Concentric Network Corp effectively offering a turnkey ISP service, and UltraStar handling the business and marketing side of things.

Near the end of the dialup ISP era, I remember that several of the free and cheap ISPs all surprisingly had the same bank of phone numbers. I always suspected there was some service that just managed everything for them.