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eMarengo opened it's doors on November 17, 2003. Born from my frustration at the prices and services for Internet access that were available in this area. After spending months trying to find a way to get high speed internet access at my house and failing, I decided there had to be a better way. Yes, I realize that dial-up is not high speed but you have to start somewhere. Besides, the other side of the story was that the one thing I could get (dial-up) cost $20+ a month. I'm no rocket scientist, but that seemed ridiculous when I was seeing ads for $9.99 a month in other areas. So, after draining the bank account, begging, and borrowing, an ISP was born.
A small hole in the wall located in downtown Marengo (hence 'e' Marengo) Ohio. I spent three months just remodeling the place and building the network components which I gathered from dark dust covered closets all over the world. With just two small racks and allot of duct tape :-), I managed to build a very reliable dial-up network that seems faster than any other dial-up service that I've ever used. I know what you're thinking, "that's because you were the only one using it". OK, I admit that helps. But now I have numerous customers using it and it's still fast!
Computers, programming, and networking are nothing new to me. I've spent the past several years in the corporate IT field doing everything I do today for big corporations. While I admit that it's been a struggle to learn everything I needed to know about running a small business, it has also been exciting to see each piece of this puzzle coming together and knowing that this wasn't just a paycheck, it's mine. Which also means that if an angry customer calls with a problem, it's probably my fault. So that's not so great, but you can't have everything. :-)
So now you know the beginning of the story...
Stay tuned for further updates,
J. Bryan Hoffman
Owner, eMarengo
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