Five years ago, Bob Malecki was looking for a business opportunity on Bainbridge Island, his new home.

When he learned that islanders were twice as likely as the overall population to be internet users, he believed that connecting Bainbridge to the worldwide web might prove viable.

He was right. As Northwest Network Services looks towards its fifth anniversary in January, it has doubled its revenue several times over, has gone from a one-man operation to a business with seven employees, and is branching into new areas of consulting.

“Research found that consumers like to have localized support and services, so this looked like a good market,” Malecki said. “And as small and medium-sized businesses grow, they need expertise.”

Malecki believes that his firm’s real product is not the servers, routers and modems at the company’s Ericksen Avenue office, but rather, the fund of knowledge developed over the past five years.

“We have a good knowledge of the local phone system, and can help consumers make adjustments to compensate for limitations in the system,” he said. “And there are some consumers that don’t want to deal with Qwest, so we can do it on their behalf.”

An internet service provider (or ISP) like Northwest acts as an on-ramp to the information superhighway that is the worldwide web. A modem in the user’s computer connects over telephone lines to the ISP, which uses its equipment to link the customer to the web and allow the customer to navigate. Like most ISPs, Northwest also provides email service, giving its customers the “bainbridge.net” address.

Customer numbers are closely guarded trade secrets, but Malecki says Northwest has “about 10 percent” of the island’s internet market. It is now among the top 25 ISPs in the Puget Sound area, he said.

The most important task for an ISP is keeping the system up and running, available for use at a mouse-click any hour of any day or night.

“If you don’t have 99.9 percent reliability, you’re not going to be around long as an ISP,” Malecki said. “That’s the standard the customers demand.”

Providing the necessary reliability and redundancy requires a cadre of tech-savvy employees, which was a challenge in the company’s early years, when the dot-com mania was at its peak.

“We were faced with finding qualified individuals who wanted to stay on the island but were willing to work for less money than Seattle wages. It took time, but we got them.”

The range of services available by internet is expanding from email and surfing to providing real-time audio and video content, meaning telephone and movie service. The limiting factor, though, is the capacity of each individual customer’s connection from home to the ISP – the so-called “last mile” problem of wiring individual homes.

At present, all those wires – telephone, electricity and cable television – are owned by private companies. The Kitsap Public Utility District’s plans to lay a publicly owned fiber-optic cable on Bainbridge Island creates the opportunity for some public involvement.

But public investment in “last-mile” infrastructure can be problematic, Malecki said, noting that the city of Tacoma’s attempt to add public telecommunications to its existing public electrical utility has not gone well.

“Community-based deployment can be viable, but it can become extremely complicated,” he said. “We think the city should use the expertise of the an existing ISP rather than starting from the beginning.

“We think we have a solid knowledge base, and can provide a constructive role in helping the island develop its telecommunications policies.”

While ever-faster internet access may be exciting to the end users, Malecki said that area provides limited business opportunities. Like so much else connected to the internet, intense competition has shaved profit margins to the point that no one makes much money.

The company’s future, he believes, will be in providing consulting services to small businesses in the local area, especially showing businesses how to get on the internet and make money doing it.

“We intend to remove the “I” from the ISP acronym, and simply become ‘service providers,’” he said.