Our Story
Learn more about Atlas Networks, the last independently owned ISP in Seattle.
I'm Ryan, the founder and CEO of Atlas, and a serial entrepreneur.
I have been working in the computer, data center and telecom industry pretty much my entire life. I am just old enough to remember the bulletin board days of Prodigy Internet Service, and I will even begrudgingly admit to having been an AOL dial-up customer. In the 90s, I installed a 128 kbps ISDN circuit (or, in English, a once-fast pre-DSL Internet connection) in my house and started re-selling it to neighbors. That was my humble beginning in the Internet business.
I started Atlas knowing that I wanted to do things differently.
The big telecom and cable companies are inefficient, and in my opinion, do not really care about the customer experience. To me, the customer experience is not just the initial phone call to set up service, or how easy it is to log in and pay your bill every month.
At Atlas, it starts with a no-BS sales process, including transparent published pricing. It means timely and quick installations measured in hours or days for currently serviced buildings, or a few short weeks for new buildings. The experience we create is supported through our awesome customer care folks based right here in Seattle, and a reliable and fast network. And while I hate to see customers leave us, if we ever did break up, I promise it will be easy to close your account without gimmicks or games.
We are working to take a different approach.
As an amateur chef in my spare time, I often use cooking analogies; much to the chagrin of my team. But, hear me out, Internet and food do have some things in common. Internet has become a commodity, and when it is good, it is made of quality, homegrown ingredients. At Atlas, we have our own unique recipe.
We start with local ingredients: Yup, our entire staff lives and works in the Seattle area; save for two of our software developers in Texas we are working on converting. Our Internet is flavorful, fast, and served reliably. We do not hand you a plastic laminated menu of offerings pages deep because in our house, it is about serving up Internet that is "less but better.” There may only be a few things on this menu, but we are damn good at delivering them.
We would not have it any other way.
Atlas is the last independent telecom company in Seattle. Compared to our national rivals, we are certainly the underdog.
But that is fine with us. We are a growing group of hard-working, customer-centric, technology people (well, most of us), who pour our hearts in to this company, because we believe in it and our values. We believe in Net Neutrality, privacy, and, above all, that customer experience I outlined earlier. We are a company of friends who innovate with passion.
Despite our size, we give back to our community every day through low-cost or donated Internet in low-income housing, free Gigabit-powered public Wi-Fi hotspots, and support for community focused non-profits. We believe that this is the way Internet service should be. If that makes us renegades, then we are proud to have that title.
Internet is better when it is local, friendly, and fast. I have never really been one to follow the rules… rules are meant to be broken — Internet connections, however, are not.
Keep it local!