Talk:Online service provider

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Before the mid90s, "online service provider" referred specifically to CompuServe, Prodigy, and America Online nee Q-Link. Surely there were other services with a similar architecture, but I can't think of them, and those were by far the biggest three. They were considerably more than merely a BBS, but didn't yet have connections to the Internet so they weren't ISPs.

My brain is too tired right now to be up to the task of describing the real differences between BBS's, online services, ISPs, networks in general, and the Internet in particular. And that is the key contribution needed for this article.

At this time, the online service providers do still provide their original online service, which is separate from the Internet that they also provide a connection to. (I haven't checked, but I think Prodigy still does?) However, a few insiders speculate that this may disappear in the future, leaving only the Internet connection and a few customer-access-only pages on the World Wide Web.

Um, I guess EWorld is on the list as an online service provider. It was a version of AOL whose servers were leased out to Apple Computer for their exclusive use as an online service for Apple customers. It operated under the EWorld brand name. Despite good support at first from Apple, it never attracted a critical mass of subscribers.