It is an unproven, but widely assumed tenet of the Internet business that you either add to your customer base, or you die. In theory, at least, you should be able to double your subscriber base without doubling your expenses. Hence, the conventional wisdom is that a few big Internet service providers will eventually dominate the industry. That means you either attract more subscribers and grow, or risk being wiped out by a stronger competitor. That's conventional wisdom.
Unconventional wisdom has it that small ISPs, both in the U.S. and Japan, can survive.
Bruce Hahne, an American in Japan who left Mitsubishi Electric to help start the ISP, Global OnLine Japan K.K, maintains that service, not size, will be the bottom line for survival. After all, there are an awful lot of newbies out there, and sometimes they can be a real pain to teach. In any case, size is one thing AOL does not have to worry about. With its move to a flat fee, the company added a half a million additional subscribers in just four weeks and doubled the usage from their existing client base. Today, AOL has eight million subscribers, with its sights set on 10 million.