XS4ALL
XS4ALL (pronounced "Access for all") is the second-oldest ISP in the Netherlands, after NLnet. It was the first in the country to offer Internet access to private individuals. XS4ALL was established in Amsterdam by Felipe Rodriquez, Rop Gonggrijp, Paul Jongsma and Cor Bosman.
It offers dial-up access as well as ADSL.
XS4ALL originated in the Dutch computer underground community. Before XS4ALL, there were Hacktic Network, a UUCP network, and Utopia, a hacker BBS, to exchange e-mail and Usenet news. Hacktic Network was started by the people from the magazine Hack-Tic, a printed underground Dutch hackers' magazine. This network evolved into XS4ALL, the first public Unix system in the Netherlands. XS4ALL quickly grew into a large full-service ISP. The provider service separated from the hacker organization and soon after became independent.
On January 15, 1994, De Digitale Stad ("The Digital City") opened, the result of a joint venture by De Balie, the Amsterdam cultural center, and XS4ALL. DDS was a Free-Net, a free system open to the public. The aim of DDS was to bring politics and citizens together in an online community.
XS4ALL distinguishes itself from other Dutch ISPs in that it often takes controversial standpoints. It has taken spammers to court, making it the target for many Internet vandals, and fought other courtroom battles; for instance, Scientology vs. the Internet.
XS4ALL initiated the Dutch Internet Industry Association (NLIP) in 1995. Together with a large number of other Internet providers, the association was created with Felipe Rodriquez, CEO of XS4ALL, as its chairman until 1997. As one of the leading organizations within NLIP, XS4ALL has always had a strong voice against censorship regulation and against the erosion of privacy.
In December 1996 XS4ALL put the signal of the Belgrade radio station B92 on the Internet. The regular broadcasts of the station had been jammed by the regime of Slobodan Milosevic. XS4ALL had already installed a leased line to radio B92, after a request to do so from Adrienne 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 transmitted back into Serbia, which was a clear example how the Internet can be used to route around censorship.
In September 1996, members of the German Internet Content Task Force (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 ordered commercial ISPs in Germany to block the homepage. They ended up blocking the entire XS4ALL website, which at the time had about 6,000 personal and commercial homepages. XS4ALL insisted that the case to 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 where ignored by the German ICTF. XS4ALL then implemented several technologies to sabotage the censorship attempt, such as automatically rotating the IP address of its website. The ICTF ended up censoring all IP traffic to the XS4ALL domain, including e-mail. After a couple of weeks this became untenable; a global protest against the censorship emerged, and a global network of mirror sites was created by the online community. The ICTF censorship attempts where cancelled after a couple of weeks.
On April 11, 1997, one of the biggest German ISPs, the DFN, a university network in Germany, started an IP-filtering blockade against XS4ALL's web site. Many protest letters were sent, mirrors were set up around the world, and the complete issue of radikal 154 was posted in the newsgroup de.soc.zensur. As a result, the blockade only lasted a few days. In The founders of XS4ALL were interrogated as suspects of publication of terrorist propaganda, but no legal actions where started against them.
XS4ALL is a strong advocate of freedom of speech, and therefore supports numerous journalistic projects on the Internet. A small sample of organizations that are sponsored by XS4ALL can be found on its website.
After Felipe Rodriquez departed as CEO, he was succeeded by Wilbert Stikkelbroek, who lead the sale of the company to KPN. He resigned in 1999 and was succeeded by Doke Pelleboer, who is still CEO of XS4ALL.
In December 1998, XS4ALL was sold to the Dutch telephone company KPN, but it has nonetheless kept its unique character and identity. As of 2003, it has about 200,000 subscribers. When it was sold, Rodriquez became a member of the supervisory board and worked as a board member until 2003. In that year, the board was converted into an advisory board, which Rodriquez joined. Cor Bosman is the only founder that still works at XS4ALL as an employee.