Who is ISP?
An Internet Service Provider (ISP) is an organization that supplies end users and businesses with internet access, IP transit, and associated routing and network transport services over fixed, wireless, or satellite infrastructure.
- Residential and business broadband internet access
- Enterprise connectivity, IP transit, and dedicated circuits
- Managed network and SD-WAN connectivity services
- Fixed wireless and mobile data access delivery
- Peering, routing, and network interconnection
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More About ISP
ISPs occupy a foundational position in the internet ecosystem. They operate the access networks that connect customers to the wider internet, along with the core and aggregation infrastructure that carries traffic between regions and between networks. Enterprises typically engage an ISP for dedicated internet access, leased lines, and IP transit, while residential and small business customers commonly receive broadband service delivered over fiber, cable, digital subscriber line, fixed wireless, or satellite links.
Offerings are usually positioned around service level commitments, bandwidth capacity, latency characteristics, and redundancy. Enterprise architects evaluate ISP options based on path diversity, peering relationships, and support for protocols such as BGP for route exchange, along with IPv4 and IPv6 address allocation. Many providers also deliver managed network services, including software-defined wide area networking and security functions such as firewalls and secure access service edge capabilities, bundled with underlying transport.
Within the broader telecommunications market, ISPs are often compared with mobile network operators, which provide cellular data connectivity, and with carriers that offer wholesale transport and wavelength services. The distinction is largely one of access technology and customer segment rather than function, since many organizations provide both fixed and mobile internet access. Where an ISP owns its last-mile infrastructure, it controls service quality more directly. Where it resells capacity over leased infrastructure, it depends on upstream providers for performance and availability.
The business significance of ISP services lies in their role as the transport layer for cloud computing, software as a service, remote work, and digital commerce. Reliable, scalable connectivity affects application performance, data protection, and continuity planning. For this reason, infrastructure leaders treat internet access as a critical dependency, and they commonly assess multihoming, diverse routing, and service credits when selecting providers.
Our description of ISP. Updated October 2026.
