A Serious Internet Venture
In 1993, the commercial Internet was in its infancy, sparking a revolution in connectivity. I teamed up with Bill Blue—a pioneer in the BBS and Apple II scene—to start CTSnet, a division of Datel Systems. Our vision was to bring high-quality, technically sophisticated Internet services to San Diego. Given our combined experience and expertise, success seemed inevitable from the start. This is the story of CTSnet’s rapid growth and lasting impact.
The Early Days
In its first years, CTSnet was a bold experiment: enhancing a dial-up bulletin board system experience—at which we were both adept—with Internet access on a large scale. The challenge wasn’t just technical; it also required a steady funding source to expand operations with continued support from Bill’s partners at Datel.
Born in a Computer Store
Our humble beginnings were in a small office at the back of Datel Systems, a computer store co-owned by Bill Blue, Larry Piland and Robert Pedigo. Bill’s partners were initially hesitant, skeptical not of the Internet’s potential but of whether he could turn it into a viable business. Any apprehension they held was premature, but I’m getting ahead of the story.
Bill managed the SCO Unix servers and rigged up dozens of various modems for our customers to dial into. Meanwhile, I developed customer support tools—written in Unix shell script—that presented a simple text menu for accessing key Internet services like Gopher, Telnet, FTP, IRC, and Lynx. Our venture quickly gained momentum.
The Make or Break of Customer Service
While managing infrastructure, I also handled customer support calls. Years of providing tech support for my software company, MDG, had honed my ability to diagnose issues over the phone, quickly getting users back online. Since our office was inside a retail computer store, customers would also drop by in person for assistance.
Community engagement was a major driver of growth. I frequently spoke at computer clubs, trade shows, and conferences, demonstrating CTSnet with a guided web-based slide deck and live dial-in demos. I’d distribute 3.5" disks loaded with Internet onboarding tools in exchange for completed signup forms. Back at the office, I’d enter dozens of new accounts, often receiving follow-up calls within hours from eager customers wanting immediate access. As word spread—especially through enthusiastic referrals—CTSnet grew faster than we could have imagined, fueled by the excitement of early Internet adopters.
Getting online back then wasn’t easy. But if you made it fast and painless, word of mouth from happy customers became your best sales strategy. A poor reputation, or one bad outage, could shut you down before you even got started—and many ISPs didn’t make it.
The Pressure to Keep Up
My role was to shield Bill from distractions so he could focus on managing servers, switches, routers, modem banks, UPSs, our in-house billing system, and working with the phone company to expand our points of presence (POPs or dialup access numbers).
The demand on our systems was relentless. Air conditioners routinely froze over from overuse, and the telco facilities were becoming overcrowded with gear. One of the most stressful moments came during an extended power failure—an all-out scramble in the dark as UPS units beeped ominously, warning of imminent shutdown. We raced to maintain operations, knowing an extended outage could leave many customers frustrated.
Growing Pains Lead to Growing Plans
It became clear that we had outgrown our space at Datel. The Internet may have been a 24/7 entity, but we weren’t—yet. Sleep was curtailed and often interrupted by pager notifications of some issue that needed attention. Mornings were spent sorting through stacks of email and a flood of voicemail left overnight. This was everyday life as an early ISP. We needed help.
Hiring Help
Within six months, customer demand had outpaced our ability to set up accounts. Enter Jim Fitzgerald and Dan Sherwin, two invaluable additions who eased the support burden and allowed Bill and me to focus on scaling the business.
Jim was a hardware and software whiz, while Dan, a submariner looking to transition out of the Navy, had prior ISP customer service experience. Dan took the lead in recruiting more staff. Soon, Max, Roberta, and Malcolm squeezed into our already cramped two-person office. With desks, workstations, fax machines, and copiers piled in, space was running out fast.
Time to Move
The time had come to leave Datel. We relocated to a nearby single-story office park—an industrial space with tilt-up concrete walls, T-bar drop ceilings, and cold fluorescent lighting. The move put us in the heart of San Diego’s “fiber central” in Kearny Mesa, near the sheriff’s dispatch office and major hospitals. The area’s infrastructure meant good connectivity to bandwidth providers and stable power, an essential upgrade for our growing operation.
Serious Growth
As CTSnet matured, growth was unstoppable. We continuously expanded, knocking down walls, moving desks, building more desks and workstations, and the hiring and training continued. We filled rooms with table-sized equipment racks packed with beige generic PC servers and individual UPS units. We ran miles of network cabling, and deployed high-capacity dialup and ISDN modem concentrators, routers, and switches. We even had supplemental locations around the county with gear to extend our presence to more area codes.
The first CTSnet logo designed by Keith Cruickshank
Our first TV ads from 1996, targeting businesses and consumers
Our popularity and reach expanded across San Diego County which drove the need for increased phone coverage and support. Running out of space yet again, we leased additional offices across the parking lot for non-technical teams—billing, sales, and a large customer service call center. To connect the buildings, we trenched the lot and ran fiber, while employees—now around 100 strong—routinely walked between offices for meetings.
Building a Data Center
As demand surged among San Diego businesses for web services and dedicated high-speed connections—T1 leased lines—bandwidth needs skyrocketed. Meanwhile, we had also launched our ON-AIR.com media streaming service, offering a variety of music channels and live event encoding. The streaming era had arrived, pushing our infrastructure to its limits. Keeping up meant constant upgrades—larger routers, bigger switches—an endless cycle at our growth rate.
So, we took the leap and began building a true data center. This meant raised flooring, cooling and fire suppression systems, shared cabinets, colocation cages, and private suites. Security was paramount: card key access controlled every door, monitored by cameras and mantraps. The network operations center (NOC) featured a glass-enclosed control room with high-tech consoles. In the electrical room, UPS cabinets and transfer switches stood ready, backed by twin diesel generators outside to guarantee uninterrupted service.
Doing It Ourselves
Nobody knew how to do this back then. You had to figure it out yourself. Bill, Jim, and Dan took charge, meticulously designing and overseeing every detail of the data center’s construction. Their hands-on approach ensured that CTSnet’s infrastructure was built for the future, cementing its reputation as a premier Internet provider.
Rebuilding a Plane in Flight
Constructing the data center while maintaining uninterrupted service was a logistical challenge. We had to carefully plan every step to protect running equipment, power, telephone, and ethernet cabling throughout the facility. At one point, we had to cut and extend cabling just to hoist and rotate entire server racks—still operational—to reposition them onto the new raised flooring. This left behind a tangled mess of temporary wiring that needed restructuring.
Once this phase was completed, CTSnet occupied over 50,000 square feet, all developed in just three years since leaving the Datel computer store. The NOC was now staffed 24/7, providing around-the-clock monitoring and colocation access. We had grown to serve over 30,000 customers—and we were still expanding. But more challenges lay ahead.
Outgrowing Our Marketing
The early iconic Internet artwork—the world in your hands. Brochures also included our Signup CD that made getting online almost as easy as getting on AOL.
135Mbps was three T3 lines of bandwidth, serious capacity in 1998.
Until 1998, most of the marketing efforts were done in-house, with creative and strategic decisions falling on Bill and me. I wrote copy, designed ads, created artwork, and even contributed to early radio and TV advertising. By this time, I had taken on the role of general manager, overseeing managers while continuing as the company’s spokesman—handling press inquiries, appearing on talk radio shows, TV news segments, and speaking at conferences. I was also our webmaster, responsible for building our website and managing web services, among other system administration duties.
Meanwhile, a major historical event loomed: The Year 2000. Customers expected us to complete readiness assessments well before the clock flipped from “99” to “2000.” It was one more challenge to tackle alongside our core responsibility—managing complex hardware and software systems. Basically, we were maxed out. Marketing often took a back seat and was not getting the professional treatment we wanted.
Serious Like a Fox
We needed help to reach that next level. Sheila Fox of Fox Marketing delivered. A professional acquaintance recommended by my mother, a savvy marketer for San Diego-based Jack in the Box, Sheila had worked with major brands, and it didn’t take long to see her value.
A recognized leader in San Diego’s ad industry, she was a powerhouse in brand development, strategic planning, account management, media buying, sales promotion, cooperative advertising, and creative direction—exactly what we needed.
The Struggle to Find Quality Service
Local competitors overpromised and underdelivered, while national giants like AOL offered a watered-down Internet experience. Many ISPs relied on gimmicky promotions but lacked technical expertise. Some were outright scams. Consumers could not afford to make a bad choice, and fly-by-night operators tarnished the industry’s image.
ABC 10 News San Diego exposes Access1 ISP scam in two part investigation.
Making CTSnet Stand Out
Sheila quickly grasped the challenges of our market and executed flawlessly to get the message out about us. She introduced us to Mires Design, a top-tier graphics and advertising firm. After a SWOT analysis, Fox and Mires built a daring CTSnet brand identity package for any campaign: print, TV, radio, sponsorships, charity events, billboards—the gamut. CTSnet was committing to ad buys months in advance, spending more than we were comfortable with. But in the fierce competition of the Internet boom, we had to stand out.
Bring on the Blue People
The tech crowd knew us—we had that covered. But to grow, we needed to reach everyone else—the rest of us—as Apple might say. Our brand had to reflect our strength and performance while remaining approachable to both businesses and everyday users.
Enter the blue people—our stylized avatars that gave a friendly face to our Serious Business brand. This bold identity set us apart, making us recognizable and distinct in a crowded market.
We may be serious but we’re having some fun, too.
Outdoor board with the blue people, seen from San Diego’s major roadways
CD mailer envelope
A new Signup CD
The Serious Business Tagline
Our Serious Business slogan came to life through whimsical yet meticulously executed photography. Even the models were exceptional—our pinstripe-suited “speeding man” was a Cirque du Soleil performance artist, holding impossible poses with athletic precision. This bold, playful imagery let us confidently signal that we were not like the others. We weren’t fooling around.
In all our ads, the root of the slogan, Serious Business, was preceded by several prefix phrases: Serious speed, Serious networking, Serious flexibility, Serious communication, Serious support, etc. For the outdoor ads on highway billboards and bus backs? Serious traffic, of course. It was all serious business. All day long, everywhere.
And it worked. The blue people were on billboards, buses, print ads, and digital screens. You heard us, too. We flooded radio and TV, leveraging incredible trade deals with Clear Channel Communications, Jefferson Pilot, live concerts, and others eager to stream their stations through our ON-AIR service.
Marketing went from a headache to a weapon. CTSnet now projected the polish of a national brand while maintaining the focused, high-touch service of a local provider—something no one else could match.
Serious on the Inside
The “serious” transformation wasn’t just external—it was happening inside the company too. Our young team, mostly in their early 20s, embraced the new identity and stepped up in customer care. Those who didn’t were soon replaced as the culture evolved to match our growing reputation.
A driving force behind this shift was Linda Wise, our new director of customer service. A PageNet veteran, she brought a team of exceptional reps as the paging company collapsed. PageNet had already done the hard work—recruiting and training top-tier talent—so when Linda offered them a new home at CTSnet, the impact was immediate.
Their arrival marked a turning point. The atmosphere became more professional, and a deep sense of pride took hold. We were building our corner of the Internet, too busy to fully grasp the significance of the moment. But now, we had an incredible team under outstanding leadership, ready to shape the future.
Surviving 2000
We had finally aligned and elevated every pillar of our business—technical strength, quality service, scalability, profitability, and a powerful brand recognized throughout our community. Things were great. We still had a lot of work left to do, and we would arrive every day, ready to dominate our market even more in the thrilling heyday of the Internet.
And yes, the Year 2000 transition came and went, without a single techno-catastrophe for us.
But a new threat was looming that year, and none of us at CTSnet saw it coming.
The End of CTSnet
Now at its peak, CTSnet ran a state-of-the-art data center, employed 100 people, and served over 30,000 customers across Southern California. And soon, it would be gone.
Our success attracted suitors—companies eager to acquire profitable ISPs in a frenzy where 10x revenue multiples were common. Bill Blue and his Datel Systems partners entertained offers, declining several, until Allegiance Telecom came knocking in the summer of that year. The deal was struck on October 18, 2000. Facing a rapidly maturing Internet market, continual costs for expansion, and the next wave of stronger competition from consolidations, the partners cashed in their chips.
Selling Out
We weren’t the only ones who ran for the exit. Our longtime competitor CONNECTnet had earlier sold to Allegiance in May, along with several other ISPs nationwide. Seven years after two BBS guys started an ISP in the back room of a computer shop with a handful of servers and a dozen modems, CTSnet was sold for $33 million.
For me, it wasn’t a celebration. Wrapped up in the passion of building something great, positive of a long road ahead, I had never asserted myself as a partner—just a guy with a steady paycheck and a front-row seat. Beyond the friendships and hard-earned wisdom, my reward was the rare opportunity to witness the full lifecycle of a company—from frenetic startup, through acquisition and integration, into a national, publicly traded telecom.
Not Dead Yet
For many at CTSnet, this was the end of the line, though very few wanted to leave. Hoping for the best, I remained onboard to see how this played out. But what a ride this was turning into, and it’s not over yet. We now have a “Serious announcement” to make to CTSnet’s staff and customers.
Stay tuned for my recollections of those final years in CTSnet Part 2: Everything Must Go. Until then, here are more things I've written about CTSnet.
Share Your Experience
2025 marks the 25th anniversary of CTSnet’s closure, and I’ve had this draft sitting since 2003. I wanted to give it the attention it deserved—to recognize that era as a pivotal moment in history. I keep recalling more stories to tell, but a proper send-off is long overdue. It’s easy to dwell on the ending, but what matters most is appreciating the unique role CTSnet played for so many of us in this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Did you work at CTSnet? Were you a customer?
Share your memories and how CTSnet shaped your life.