Mindspring Enterprises Inc, the acquisitive internet service provider is at it again, this time acquiring the subscriber base to Sprynet, the internet-access only service operated by CompuServe Corp, which is now owned by America Online Inc. Mindspring is paying between $35m and $45m for the 180,000 subscribers, the customer support and the network operation facilities in Seattle. The final figure will depend upon the number of Sprynet subscribers that want to move over to Mindspring, but it looks like costing Mindspring about $250 per subscriber. At the end of the second quarter Mindspring had 393,000 subscribers, including 15,000 hosting customers and had $60.3m cash in the bank, which included the proceeds from an offering earlier in the year. The Sprynet subscribers do not really fit in AOL’s model, which involves providing both content and access and AOL no longer runs its own network either, having sold it to WorldCom Inc as part of the three way deal that gave it CompuServe’s subscriber base. AOL leases back the network from WorldCom on a five year preferential lease and also leases from GTE Internet Networking. Sprynet started in 1987 as Spry Systems Integration, a Novell Inc NetWare reseller. An application was developed to connect NetWare clients to TCP/IP hosts in 1992 and two more version followed in 1993 and 1994, when the company also shipped the first commercial version of the Mosaic browse licensed from the University of Illinois. That year it also launched the successful Internet in a Box package. That caught the eye of CompuServe and was acquired for $100m in March 1995 (03/15/95). In July 1995 it launched the first version of Mosaic for Windows 95 (07/20/95).
