Whidbey Telecom - Internet Services

Internet Services

Internet services on Whidbey Island began in 1993. Whidbey Telephone began Whidbey Internet Services (WIS) to cover the telephone company's service area. At the same time, another company, Whidbey Internet Connections (WIC), was founded to serve customers of GTE on the north end of the island. WIC later expanded to also serve people on the south end of Whidbey Island. WIC's Internet domain was 'whidbey.net', whereas WIS's was 'whidbey.com'.

Whidbey Internet Connections and Whidbey Internet Services merged in 1995 into Whidbey.NET. As a result of the merger, some customers of Whidbey.NET on the south end of Whidbey continue to have '.net' addresses whereas most south end customers have '.com'. Until 2001, Whidbey.NET maintained two different customer databases on their servers, leading some customers to have different passwords, and even different usernames depending on how and where they connected to the ISP.

Whidbey.NET began to offer DSL services to some customers (within one mile of local exchange systems) in 2000. By 2002, all Whidbey Telephone customers were capable of receiving Whidbey.NET DSL on south Whidbey Island and in Point Roberts. In 2005, the newly rebranded Whidbey Telecom Internet and Broadband began offering 5.5 Mbit/s DSL, and set their other speeds at 512kbit/s, and 2.5 Mbit/s. However, Whidbey Telecom does not offer DSL services in Verizon territory on Whidbey Island, but does still provide dial-up services in those areas.

Beginning the spring of 2009, Whidbey Telecom began upgrading customers, free of charge, from ADSL to ADSL2+ services. This included speed upgrades to 18Mbps, 12Mbps, and 6Mbps. A new 30Mbps bonded ADSL2+ service was also made available at that time. Additionally, existing dial-up customers were offered a discounted 3Mbit/s. service, in advance of Whidbey Telecom's phasing out their Dial-up service on South Whidbey and in Point Roberts. Which was completed by Summer 2010.

The DSL prices are competitive, although Whidbey Telecom is the only provider available in their service area, apart from Comcast, Broadstripe, Wild Blue, and HughesNet.

In addition to DSL services on South Whidbey, Whidbey Telecom also provides free WiFi Hotspots in many locations on South Whidbey for customers, as well as a pay-to-play service for visitors. Fiber to the home is not yet available, due to the market cost of fibre, but businesses may connect using fibre technology, including Gigabit service.