Internet provider is on a mission
Pete Ashdown, seen in his network operations center, founded Internet s ervice p rovider XMission. His Salt Lake City company endured the dot-com collapse and several stages of Net evolution. (Francisco Kjolseth/The Salt Lake Tribune)
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By Bob Mims
The Salt Lake Tribune
Pete Ashdown is no Al Gore -- nobody has ever said he invented the Internet. He was more of a midwife, delivering the World Wide Web to Utah's rank and file.
Today, the 37-year-old president of XMission reigns over the Wasatch Front's largest, longest-running, locally owned Internet s ervice p rovider (ISP). More than 20,000 Utahns log on using Ashdown's service, which employs 50.
That's an eternity of mouse clicks away from XMission's humble beginnings in early 1993, a time when Internet access still was largely the domain of higher education. Ashdown, then a University of Utah computer science student, thought he saw the future: off-campus, commercial access for the surging number of personal computing enthusiasts.
"It was a matter of timing," he recalls. "I figured, do it now, before everyone else does, or don't do it at all."
Ashdown drew up a business plan, shopping it around to various banks and finally the U.S. Small Business Administration. The interest was there, but when the lanky programmer learned it would take at least six months to get an SBA loan, his heart sank.
Fate intervened, and from an unexpected quarter.
"I left a copy of the business plan, by accident, on my father's dinner table one weekend," Ashdown said, smiling at the recollection. "He called me that Monday morning and said, 'I'll finance it.' "
Robert Ashdown, now a retired educator and craftsman, "had no clue about the technical aspect of it -- but he had faith in my ability to do it," his son says. "He also said that if I didn't do this now, I'd be working for someone else all my life."
Pete Ashdown launched XMission in November 1993 with $27,000 he invested in one Sun server, five modems, a router and a network hub. The first domicile for Ashdown's ISP was a utility closet inside a friend's clothing shop on 700 East, where the guts of XMission sat atop a folding table.
At first a one-man show, XMission kept Ashdown busy, depending on a pager to summon him to his closet enterprise when the system went down or a customer had problems. For much of his first year, he also kept his job at computer simulation pioneer Evans & Sutherland.
"My first customer was a friend at the U. of U. engineering program who wanted a way to use the Internet from home," Ashdown says. A year later, advertising by word of mouth and on local "dial-up" bulletin board systems, XMission topped 500 users.
Dave Morgan joined XMission, and in January 1995, the company opened its first and only Salt Lake City offices at 51 E. 400 South. In early 1995, Ashdown's sister, Sue, bought Morgan's share and began a five-year stint as co-owner.
The outspoken, issues-oriented Sue Ashdown became a frequent voice for ISP rights on Utah's Capitol Hill, and left XMission to form the American Internet Service Providers Association in 2000.
But while her public life thrived in Washington, D.C., there was acrimony at home over XMission management and reimbursements. When a dispute over terms of the sale of her 39 percent share back to her brother arose -- Sue Ashdown wanted more than $2 million -- she filed a civil lawsuit in January 2002; it was dismissed nine months later after an undisclosed settlement.
Reached by e-mail in Cuba, where she was on an extended vacation, Sue Ashdown declined -- as had her brother -- to discuss details of their split. But she is proud of her four subsequent years as executive director of her now-defunct ISP association, a role that took her to the halls of Congress to lobby on behalf of small ISP members.
"We achieved some important victories," she said, noting efforts to fight large telecommunications companies intent on eliminating smaller competitors, and her role in helping ISPs organize state associations.
"I don't have much contact with Sue," Pete Ashdown says, but declines to further discuss the matter.
However, he has kept some of his sister's legacy alive. Though by nature no fan of public appearances, Pete has continued XMission's activism. He has spoken out for the Utopia Internet development project as well as measures to protect children from pornographic spam.
But the father of two much prefers to run XMission, a business he loves so much that he has turned down several lucrative purchase offers over the years. Competitors admire his loyalty to customers.
"I've always had a large amount of respect for XMission -- they run a class act over there," said Mike Biesele, senior system administrator at Salt Lake City's ArosNet Inc., which has 5,000 accounts. "Pete and XMission have always recognized the importance of having healthy competition within an industry."
Bill Kucera, spokesman for the Utah Education Network, credits XMission and other ISPs for sharing network bandwidth with the association. "This is a marvelous collaboration of private and public providers to maximize resources and improve services to Utahns," he said.
Ashdown believes in repaying a loyal subscriber base and community that has made XMission a success -- and he has some clear ideas on how his company will continue to thrive.
The biggest opportunity? Meeting an increasing demand for cheap and secure off-site data storage. Corporations need safe, off-site backups for their burgeoning records; private users look for remote, disaster-proof storage of important documents and family photos.
"I predict the decay of media, CDs, DVDs, videotapes, etc., with video rental stores disappearing because we will be able to get everything over the Net," he says.
And, once again, Ashdown is not waiting for this new market to come to him.
"We already are making some local backups for our customers, and even remotely to a site we have in Palo Alto, Calif., at 10 cents a megabyte a month," he says. "We're hoping to roll out a photo [storage] server within the next year."
bmims@sltrib.com
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