When Avi Freedman was getting ready to graduate Temple University in 1992, there was no way to buy internet service in Philadelphia. Literally. If you wanted to send someone money to get a dial-up account, there was nobody to send it to. But Freedman had already been running public access Unix machines and letting people he knew log into them. So he decided to turn his personal frustration into a company that would offer dial-up Internet access to everyone in the area.
