> “So you have this kind of bottom-up movement that happened in the ‘90s, with thousands of local ISPs routing these small cities - for example, it's very normal in Russia to have an ISP just for a city of 50,000 inhabitants,” Limonier said. As of 2015, there were 15,433 ISPs registered with the Russian accounting chamber.
It was quite common in several countries in and around the Middle East, SE/E Asia, to have not just ISPs for small towns but several ISPs in medium towns that appeared and disappeared, for myriad reasons like finances or cat and mouse games with authorities. Oftentimes the only way to know which latest, working ISP to use was through word of mouth. It gave the early days of the internet an additional unfettered, unexplored kind of feeling.
It was quite common in several countries in and around the Middle East, SE/E Asia, to have not just ISPs for small towns but several ISPs in medium towns that appeared and disappeared, for myriad reasons like finances or cat and mouse games with authorities. Oftentimes the only way to know which latest, working ISP to use was through word of mouth. It gave the early days of the internet an additional unfettered, unexplored kind of feeling.