XS4ALL
Parent KPN | | |
| Website | https://www.xs4all.nl/en/ | |
|---|---|---|
XS4ALL was an
by Felipe Rodriquez,As of 2007, XS4ALL was one of the larger ISPs in The Netherlands. In 2005, the company had a turnover of 86.1 million euro, realising a 15.4 million euro profit before taxes. Also in 2005, XS4ALL employed 327 people (325 FTE) and served 265,000 private subscribers. The company is known for its willingness to take on controversial issues; has taken legal action against
XS4ALL was sold to KPN in December 1998, but remained an independent subsidiary.[4][2] In January 2019, KPN announced that it would eventually phase out the XS4ALL brand and continue operations under the KPN brand.[5][2] KPN stopped offering services with the XS4ALL brand name on 24 December 2021, and will migrate existing customers to KPN infrastructure during 2022.[6]
A petition and a special action commission was started to try to revert this decision, the petition has been signed over 50,000 times, signatories include ex-board members and founders of XS4ALL. In November 2019 the committee launched a new company named Freedom Internet, meant to serve as an ideological successor to XS4ALL, and supported by a crowdfunding action that raised 2.5 million euro.[2] Freedom Internet initially offers e-mail hosting, and rolled out its first DSL connections in 2020.
Activism and controversies
Scientology
In 1995 members of the
Station B92
In December 1996, XS4ALL put the Belgrade radio station B92 online using streaming audio technology in response to the jamming of its broadcasts by the regime of Slobodan Milošević. XS4ALL installed a leased line to the radio station in response to a request from Adriënne van Heteren, a Dutch citizen who went to Belgrade to set up various cultural activities. After XS4ALL had launched the online broadcast of Radio B92, its signal was picked up by the Voice of America and BBC World Service and transmitted back into Serbia, where it was then also transmitted via several local radio-stations.[7]
Radikal magazine
In September 1996, members of the German InternetContentTaskForce (ICTF) blocked XS4ALL for about a month because one of its subscribers had put an issue of radikal magazine on his homepage. radikal is illegal in Germany, and to prevent its publication the German Bundesanwaltschaft (prosecutor's office) ordered commercial ISPs in Germany to block its website. They ended up blocking the entire XS4ALL site, which at the time had about 6,000 personal and commercial homepages. XS4ALL insisted that the case be settled by the courts, because it did not want to infringe on its customers' rights of free expression; however, the requests to follow traditional legal paths were ignored by the German ICTF.
On 11 April 1997 one of the largest German ISPs, the
Arab Spring in Egypt and Libya
In early 2011 the government in Egypt blocked (initially international, later all) internet-access hoping to thwart organizers of protests against the government and also to control the news leaving the country. On an incoming requests[9] XS4All opened up their—still existing—dial-in modems to give people from Egypt direct access to the open internet. Because international telephone connections from Egypt to the rest of the world were not blocked, people could dial into the modems in Amsterdam and from there subsequently log into the internet using username and password xs4all. When later that year a similar situation arose in Libya, the possibilities of such connections were brought to the attention of protesters in that country.[10]
Corporate culture
In December 1998, XS4ALL was sold to the Dutch incumbent phone company KPN. Many of the original employees, especially system managers, still work there.
XS4ALL also sponsors and hosts the sites of many
References
- ^ "Wie wij zijn" [Who we are]. xs4all.nl (in Dutch).
- ^ a b c d Nagtegaal, Bastiaan (11 November 2019). "Geestelijk opvolger XS4ALL gaat Freedom Internet heten" [Ideological successor to XS4All will be named Freedom Internet]. NRC Handelsblad (in Dutch). Retrieved 11 November 2019.
- ^ "Ted Lindgreen, de ware pionier met TCP/IP en NLnet" [Ted Lindgreen, the true pioneer with TCP/IP and NLnet] (PDF) (in Dutch). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-04-15.
- ^ "XS4ALL wordt onafhankelijke dochter KPN" [XS4ALL becomes independent subsidiary of KPN] (in Dutch). XS4ALL Blog. 17 December 1998.
- ^ "KPN zet vol in op KPN-merk" [KPN goes all-in on KPN brand] (in Dutch). KPN. 10 January 2019.
- ^ Julian Huijbregts (20 December 2021), "KPN stopt per 24 december met merknaam XS4ALL voor nieuwe klanten" [KPN to stop using XS4ALL brand name for new customers on 24 December], Tweakers (in Dutch)
- ^ a b "Geschiedenis" [History]. XS4ALL (in Dutch). Archived from the original on July 2, 2012. Retrieved 16 June 2012.
- ^ Anonymous video featuring the XS4ALL office building, Eekholt 42.
- ^ Egyptians desperate to get ... Archived December 5, 2014, at the Wayback Machine, 1 February 2011. Visited: 16 June 2012
- ^ XS4All blog: Dial-in accounts for Libya and Egypt (Dutch), 21 February 2011. Visited: 16 June 2012
- ^ "FrontPage - Projet de traduction Traduc.org". traduc.org.
External links
Media related to XS4ALL at Wikimedia Commons