What happened to PremoWeb?

In 1999, PremoWeb.com was registered by two brothers who set out to start a specialized hosting service. However due to widespread panic of the looming Y2K bug and the bursting of dot com bubble, investors were understandably worried and the plans were abandoned. One of the brothers, Rob Johnson started working with Ernie Moore to repair computers out of Ernie’s garage. As business picked up, the Tech Town Computers first location was opened at the Old Town Center in Crescent City, California.

In 2000, Nicholas Maietta of Santa Cruz, CA and Thomas Hughes of Sacramento moved to Crescent City, California and started Serving You Web Solutions, a regional internet service provider that would later set its sights on becoming a nationwide dialup, DSL and hosting services provider. It was apparent that Rob had prior experience manning the telephones as a technical support specialist at NetHelp which gave him total insight into the inner workings of dialup. After a short meeting with Rob and Ernie it became apparent we needed to dissolve Serving You Web Solutions to form PremoWeb Internet Services, a collaborative startup that would predictively be more affective as a team.

In February 2001, PremoWeb Internet Services officially opened for business, sharing the same location as Tech Town Computers as 1347 Northcrest Drive, in Crescent City, CA. Nationwide dialup, ISDN and DSL services along with domain registration and limited web hosting services were sold under the PremoWeb brand. In 2003, Just prior to moving their families to Tonapah, Nevada, Rob and Ernie sold their shares of PremoWeb and Ernie sold Tech Town Computers to Mike Napoli. Ernie and Rob both went onto starting another Tech Town computer repair shop in Tonapah with Rob focusing on IT. Mike’s interest was mainly PremoWeb as it had the potential to be quite lucrative and could scale far more easily than a repair business. In 2005, Nicholas sold his percentage and in 2007 temporarily re-joined the company to help fix some issues that needed to be addressed.

In 1999, Nicholas was a partner in Commnetivity, Inc and helped pick the name as it’s name is derived from the words “Communications Connectivity”. At the time, Commnetivity, Inc. was a fiber optical manufacturing and distribution company. In late 2007, after helping get PremoWeb back into shape, Nicholas went on to re-partner with Thomas Hughes to form a web design firm under the commnetivity.com domain and brand. This firm would focus on designing and building web portals for municipal governments.

Sadly in 2012, Tech Town Computer and PremoWeb’s owner passed away and long-time employee Eric Block took the reigns. Eric would later shut down both businesses. Eric passed away in 2016.

What happens now?

With the PremoWeb brand and domain dormant, Nicholas decided to work to re-acquire the domain name and in late 2016 had the winning bid for the domain at auction. This is a fresh start for the brand. In 20 years the brand has had no negative feedback. The brand will be revived to offer hosting, IoT solutions a technology blog and more.

What happened to my old @premoweb.com email address?

When the business shut down without warning, email services vanished with it. Nicholas was the email system administrator and will offer to provider free email for all prior PremoWeb customers sometime in 2018.

Nicholas can be reached at 415-THE-NERD or via email at nick@premoweb.com.