I have been an Earthlink customer for years, through it's various iterations (first it was Sprynet, a part of Prodigy, then it was part of AOL, who sold the Sprynet part to Mindspring who merged with Earthlink. . .). For me it was simply a matter of my same provider having the service in this area. Now if you were to ask me about the subcontractors, I'd have to tell you that the access is provided by SBC (now the owner of AT&T) and the DSL end of things is managed by Covad. It looks a bit like what the banks are doing, buying each other up.