Freedom2 will switch off its ISP Argonet on June 30th, says their support guru Paul Vigay.Paul announced a take over of Argonet, which is billed as an Acorn friendly ISP and provides web hosting and email for many RISC OS users, in May last year. However the deal to hand over control recently fell through, resulting in the management's decision to shutdown the ISP over the next six months. Paul says he will instead form his own from scratch, called Orpheus, and tempt existing Argonet customers to his new service provider.
Formed in 1995, Argonet was spun off in 2001 from parent company Argo Group to form Freedom2, who currently produce networking technologies for schools. Argonet remained as an ISP business within Freedom2.
Paul, a keen RISC OS advocate, told us: "I'm offering exactly the same services so I can host [Argonet users'] websites, domains and email aliases etc, and I can forward their Argonet email address to any new email address they may want, but come June 30th, then I guess Freedom2 will pull the plug and anyone who hasn't moved (either to me or another ISP) will lose their email address and website. However, I'm continuing to negotiate to see if I can obtain the argonet.co.uk domain - which would be handy."
Eagle eyed Argonet users first became concerned after Paul posted on his website: "With the announced winding down of ArgoNet, we are currently building an Internet Service Provider [Orpheus] based on new hardware and infra-structure". Although some Argonet users were reportedly notified of the decision by letter, one Argonet subscriber told us on Wednesday: "I have heard nothing from Argonet".
Freedom2 were unavailable for comment.
Update at 11:16 14/2/2005
Paul's posted an FAQ for Argonet users on his new ISP's website. Contrary to the original article which stated that Paul will quit his job at Freedom2, he also informs us that he still technically works for Freedom2 and will stay on as normal for the time being. Paul adds: "I'm hoping that Orpheus will pay my salary in the near future, so that I can move over to that full-time, but certainly until 30th June, I'll still be doing Argonet support here as well as setting up Orpheus."
Links
Paul's press release - specifics, links, etc.