Verio - History

History

Verio was founded by Mark D. Johnson, Darin Brannan, and Justin Jaschke in 1996 with a mission of becoming the largest ISP/Hosting company for the SMB/Mid Market business segment through a national infrastructure supported by local technical sales and servicing capabilities from acquired ISP/Hosting companies. Originally named World Net Access, Verio raised substantial funds ($1.1B) with which to purchase ISPs around the United States and Europe. It was funded by the principal founders, private investors, NTT, and institutional investors in a private placement. The concept was to roll up small ISPs into one large national ISP and achieve economies of scale.

By the year 2000, Verio had purchased almost fifty small ISPs, most in the U.S. but some in Europe. During this time Verio went public on the NASDAQ, trading under the symbol VRIO. In early 2000 Verio was sold to NTT at a per-share price of over $60, a total cost slightly exceeding $5 billion. Because NTT was a 53% Japanese government-owned company, foreigners were not allowed to own NTT stock, according to Japanese law at the time, and therefore the buy-out was a 100% cash deal. The United States Congress held hearings over the transaction to ensure it did not violate national security concerns. The Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation expressed concern that the Japanese government, which owned 53 percent of NTT at the time, could gain access to classified information should the U.S. government use Verio's network to tap Internet communications during an investigation. To placate these concerns, NTT agreed to form a separate division within the company staffed only by U.S. citizens to handle any work in support of government investigations. As a result, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States recommended that President Clinton allow the $5.5 billion purchase to proceed. The deal also prompted scrutiny of Japan's openness to foreign telecom competitors.

Shortly after the announced deal, the NASDAQ stock market crashed in the spring of 2000 in the dot-com bubble burst. The agreed price of around $60 remained and NTT and Verio completed the transaction by the fall of 2000. On March 9, 1998 Verio's President Mark D. Johnson suffered a heart attack and died while on a business trip.

Over the course of the next few years Verio abandoned the lower revenue consumer internet access market and focused primarily on the more lucrative business to business web hosting market. Much of the original infrastructure and employees it had purchased were disbanded or consolidated into a few large centralized data centers.

Verio continues to operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of NTT Communications.

At the end of 2005, the backbone and some dedicated hosting centers moved to NTT America, with the web hosting business staying with Verio. At the same time, the European arm, Verio Europe, was moved in its entirety to NTT Europe. In October 2006 Verio Europe was renamed NTT Europe Online.