This created a problem. In this game, unlike in the callback business, everybody was playing well. Reporters were being overwhelmed by the big providers with tales of their exciting new services and the thousands of new clients who were signing on. It seemed like everybody who knew how to turn on a computer had a press agent touting their technological prowess. Just being a nice guy in an exciting industry wasn’t going to make headlines here. Like a Hollywood press agent, if we wanted a really big story, we were going to have to come up with an incredible hook to hang it on.

Suddenly it came to me. What if we offered everyone in America free Internet service? Yeah, what if we formed a nonprofit association so no one would suspect our motives, and actually offered free Internet access to the whole country? This would mean that the Internet was no longer the plaything of the well-to-do, but everyone, regardless of income, could benefit from coming on line. Later on we would figure out some way to make money by offering the users some enhanced service, or selling them telephone time, or something else. For now, what did it matter? We had a big story, and we were going to be famous. We would be national heroes, and we would come to totally dominate the industry. I incorporated the International Internet Association, sent out press releases, and waited.

I didn’t have to wait long. Within two weeks a thousand people had requested free accounts, and within a month three thousand. The only fly in the ointment was that we didn’t have a clue about how to run a commercial Internet service. No problem, my telecommunications gurus from Bellcore, the telephone industry’s leading research and standards organization, assured me. We have half a dozen modems ready to go, and if that’s not enough, we’ll get up as many more as you want as fast as you need. Our six modems could only accommodate a few dozen users, and we were talking thousands. I told my telephone gurus once again to increase capacity to several hundred units. They said no problem. They lied. Apparently, Internet technology was much different than telephone switching. Telephone switching is precise and reliable, while Internet technology is unstable and always changing. Our Bellcore Ph.D.s were the best that money could buy, but this was out of their league and they just couldn’t seem to get it right.

Still the requests for free lines continued to pour in—ten thousand, twenty thousand, thirty thousand—it just wouldn’t stop. We couldn’t keep up with the demand, and I couldn’t keep up with the bills from the Bellcore team either. I had already sunk close to a half a million dollars into the technology, and it wasn’t up to snuff.

I know this sounds unlikely, but orders were pouring in so fast, we didn’t even care that nobody was paying anything. With this kind of volume, we’d sign everybody now, and make money later. The International Internet Association (IIA) was becoming a nationally recognized group for their free Internet service, and Max, the association’s executive director, was being heralded in the media as a national hero for putting poor people up on the Net. This kind of publicity had to be worth millions. It had better be, because by the time the Ph.D.s finished with us, that’s just what it would cost. The better things got, the worse they got, and unfortunately, things kept getting better. Forty thousand, fifty thousand applicants, the system still wasn’t working right, and still no one was paying us a dime.