Cobion Anti-Spam Offers More to ISPs

A software provider with a unique take on content filtering and anti-spam rolls out co-branding and revenue sharing for ISPs. The company's first US co-brand explains what features ISPs will want to look for.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Associate Editor [October 7, 2003]

Today, Cobion is announcing a new pricing plan and co-branding options for the company's many ISP customers. Revenue sharing and co-branding allow the company to reach more ISPs than ever before (whereas license-based pricing tended to price the world's many small ISPs out of the market for Cobion software).

"We've talked to ISPs as small as several thousand subscribers," says John Matera, Cobion's CEO.

The company's software, called OrangeBox, is at version 2.0 since June 17, 2003. The software uses heuristics to complement a detailed system that scans the Web all day, every day, adding websites and even the URLs of individual pages to its massive database, which is deployed to 7 edge servers around the world.

It's important to scan each page, because some websites, Matera notes, may have upsetting content on a few pages. "We have 58 categories (although most home users just want to block some combination of hate, crime, drugs, and sex). We'll put deep flags on some stories. CNN has many categories, for example. We also store deep links to images and can block them from showing up in, say, a google search."

The first US ISP to co-brand OrangeBox is Grand Rapids, Mich.-based Iserv. The company was founded in 1995 and opened for business in 1996, offering dialup to both residential and business customer. The current CEO, Victor Shepherd, took over about two years ago.

"The company went through heavy growth in the late nineties," he says. "There was significant investment in infrastructure. We've taken the last two years to redefine our product, and we've acquired or merged with four ISPs in Western Michigan. Two years ago, we had about 30,000 subscribers, now we have about 48,000. About 30,000 are residential, and we have over 17,000 business customers buying everything from dialup to managed services."

Iserv has grown far from its dialup-only roots. In addition to managed services, the company offers accelerated dialup, DSL, cable (through Charter), webhosting, website development, and other data center services.

Describing a wide variety of customers, Shepherd says, "we host the largest Christian website in the world, gospelcom.net, and we've also got an online currency trading environment. The result is that we have people monitoring the network 24 hours a day. We have to have people here 24 hours per day because we offer business service."

It's a time of transition for Iserv, but that's no excuse to stand still. "In April of 2001, the decision was made to bring in different management, that it was time to go from growth to profit. We're using technology to cut costs and manage more from one location, but we also have to offer more services at the same price point."

In a conservative area, spam and content filtering make since. "It's a family-oriented market here in Western Michigan," says Shepherd. Content filtering, Shepherd says, "allows someone in the home to define the Internet experience of the younger people or other individuals in the home, whether they're avoiding pornography or scams, or whatever."

Besides Cobion, Iserv looked at filtering products popular in the religious community: 8e6, Puresight, ContentKeeper, and N2H2.

Shepherd says that a key feature of Cobion's software is that it not only blocks content, but allows permissions to be time-based, so that children, for example, cannot be online when they're supposed to be asleep (and the parents get to define what time is sleep time).

The size of the download was also important. 1.5 MB, the size of the OrangeBox client software, is not small, but it would not take too long to download, even over dialup.

Shepherd says that Iserv looked at products where the ISP sets and maintains the filters. "We prefer that Cobion does that," he says.

Iserv is also pleased to be able to own-brand the service, as iGuard (powered by Cobion).

On the other hand, Cobion also allows users to opt out of filtering. Cobion filters according to 58 categories, and users can opt in or out of filtering in each category. The key point is not Cobion's 58 categories, but that users have flexibility in choosing the type of content filtering.

Marla Lindsey, Iserv director of product development, says that intelligent filtering is important. "We want to allow research on breast cancer, and they [Cobion] analyze each website individually."

Carla Flanders, Iserv director of marketing, adds it's important to give parents control. "The software has a whitelist and a blacklist controlled by the parent, so if Cobion has blocked a website, the parent can override the block."

As the company stops acquiring and building, and focuses on profits, it will grow through marketing and affinity programs, reaching out to colleges, churches, schools, and chambers of commerce. "We don't have the marketing budget of the large national players," explains Flanders, so we spend money on channels."

That exactly what local ISPs across the nation are doing.

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