Internode turns 20

Australian ISP Internode celebrated a birthday yesterday, with 20 years passing since its establishment by Simon Hackett.

The company has become, in its own words, “Australia’s largest privately owned broadband provider”, with 450 employees and more than 200,000 customers.

Internode was founded on 8 May 1991 when Simon Hackett, fresh from the University of Adelaide, turned down a job offer from a Silicon Valley software firm to start his own business.

“When a company in California made me a very generous job offer to move to the US, I thought seriously about it, but I’d always had an irrationally strong desire to run my own company,” Hackett said.

The company has grown from a small South Australian dialup-only ISP to a provider of wired and wireless broadband services to business and residential customers nationally. It maintains connectivity to the US, Asia and Europe.

In its time, Internode has helped deploy a major wireless network around Adelaide, launched a region-wide WiMAX network on the Yorke Peninsula and to this day plays a role in the development of national politics regarding broadband.

As Managing Director, Simon Hackett is still involved with the company.

“Simon is a visionary who is extraordinarily motivated to achieve what is possible with technology,” said Internode CEO Patrick Tapper.

“We are enormously positive about the next 20 years,” Tapper said.