Easynet was founded on 1 August 1994 by David Rowe and Keith Teare, with the office based at 44-46 Whitfield Street, London.

On 23 January 2001 Easynet became the first operator in mainland U.K. to unbundle a local loop of copper wire from British Telecom's network and provide its own broadband service over it.

[8][9] On 16 March 2004 Easynet acquired Novaxess Beheer B.V., a Dutch broadband company that had at the time unbundled 84 exchanges across the Netherlands and supplied 4,500 business customers.

[10] On 31 December 2005 the Office of Fair Trading regulator cleared the acquisition of Easynet by British Sky Broadcasting despite concerns raised by rivals.

One of the advertisements which appeared in the London Evening Standard, showed a man being punched in the face by his male boss, with the slogan: "When your MD finds out you're spending up to 85% too much on your internet connection".

A second advertisement showed an image of a woman punching a man in the face with the slogan: "When your employees discover that their internet connection could be 140 times faster".

The Advertising Standards Authority banned these adverts ruling that they could cause serious or widespread offence, and that they condoned violence and anti-social behavior.