Internet Providers Get to Points (of Presence)

Probably the best way to rank local Internet service providers would be by the amount of revenue they bring in. But until the companies start turning their financial statements over to the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal, we’re left with a more arbitrary system.

This year, the Business Journal ranked the companies according to their points of presence — or their number of locations that serve as hubs for their Internet operations.

That jumped Arkansas.net into the No. 1 spot with 86 points of presence and about 20,000 dial-up customers. Last year, the Fayetteville company checked in at No. 2 behind Internet Partners of America, a Fort Smith company since bought by publicly held OneMain.com of Reston, Va.

A year ago, Arkansas.net said it had more than 10,000 dial-up customers but did not disclose its points of presence. Barry Cunningham, Arkansas.net’s vice president of development, says the company’s focus has been on serving rural areas from day one.

“We want to provide good Internet service to rural communities,” Cunningham says. “Not Little Rock, Fayetteville, Jonesboro or Fort Smith. We’re more interested in 50 other cities across the state. America Online is not in Piggott, so they don’t have points of presence to service those areas.

“Little Rock could dry up and blow away tomorrow, and we’d still have 98 percent of our market.”

IPA, whose parent company is traded as ONEM on the Nasdaq stock exchange, claimed last year it had 25,000 dial-up customers statewide and 3,729 points of presence. But for the year 2000 rankings, IPA says it has 77 Northwest Arkansas points of presence and declined to say how many dial-up customers it has.

The Net Connection of Fayetteville and PC Turnkey were third and fourth with three points of presence each, followed by Millennium Communications of Rogers with two. Smaller companies like Golden Technologies in Springdale concentrate on individual and specialized service to compete with their larger counterparts.

Golden president Joel Golden says he focuses on packaged service and reduced costs.

“We offer reduced costs on anything from a single piece of hardware to entire computer systems,” Golden says. “We also offer reduced in-shop and on-site labor costs for our customers. We only have about a 10 percent mark-up on hardware versus an industry standard of about 33 to 44 percent depending on the business.”

Golden says subscribers get as much as a 25 percent labor discount for on-site work. He says the market has become so competitive that ISPs are all branching out into unique services and pricing structures.

“We focus more on using the labor aspect as a selling tool,” Golden says. “Just like unlimited Internet service is a selling tool for some companies. The thing is, though, hardly anyone would need unlimited service. If you used 200 hours of Internet service per month, that would mean you were on for seven hours per day.

“We offer a tiered pricing structure that’s focused more on what subscribers will use. We also offer educational discounts for teachers and students.”

The Journal also takes a look in this issue at local computer dealers ranked by their number of full-time computer employees. Radio Shack in Fayetteville topped the list with 39, followed by Dixieland Electronics in Bentonville and Hamco Business Solutions in Springdale with 20 each.

Radio Shack and Dixieland were No. 1 and No. 2 last year, with 39 and 23 full-time computer employees each. But Custom MicroSystems has dropped from No. 3 last year to No. 4 in 2000 although it kept 19 computer employees both years.

Hamco has been on a steady increase for several years.

Inacom Information Systems of Fay-etteville was fourth in 1999 with 18 computer employees and Hamco was fifth with 16. Inacom dropped to fifth-place this time with the same number. MegaByte Computer Center’s 15 computer employees made them sixth both years.

Compaq, Tandy and IBM seem to be the most widely carried computer brands, while a growing number of companies are offering support.