Northpoint Points South

RebornData (on behalf of the madding crowd) writes: "I'm sending this via a dialup account because Northpoint just shut off their network (according to my ISP -- Telocity) as a consequence of their financial troubles. Here's an MSNBC story about it. Telocity claims that they will find an alternative provider for me, but it will be at least three weeks. Methinks anyone trying to order / change DSL service from anyone in the next few months is going to be hosed ... because *every* Northpoint customer will have to be reprovisioned. Ugh." As a former Flashcom victim, my thoughts go out. And those of you with the enviable opportunity to catch up on some cuddling by the fire can perhaps burn all your old contracts and "cheap, always-on access" advertisements.

Comments

Some specifics about the Northpoint shutdown

[hndrcks]

Some technical background about why "those companies that shoulda saw it coming" couldn't have done much, regardless:

The Northpoint network used Copper Mountain DSLAMs with a frame relay backend. Rythms is the only surviving DSL provider that uses a similar setup, so customers in a CO that have a NPT _and_ Rythms DSLAM would be able to keep their router and IP. Everyone else is screwed.

Everyone is screwed anyway, because the ILECS, smelling blood, have refused to 'hot swap' the existing DSL pairs over to a new DSL provider. Verizon is the worst - full re-provisioning of the pair required, 20-30 days of delay and obfuscation until a 'new' pair is forthcoming, if ever.

Some ISPs have gone to local PSCs (public service commissions) to get relief. I believe the Texas PSC has sided with the ISPs, and required SWBell to hot-swap the pairs to a new DSL provider.

MSN DSL customers really screwed...

[Noer]

From what I've heard from a reliable source (a friend of mine whose business used Northpoint until 3 days ago), MSN DSL customers are really screwed - MSN didn't give them ANY warning at all about the cutoff, and MSN contracts through Northpoint (err, that should be past tense, no?) in the New England area.

I would say "serves em right for using MSN," but MSN knew for days at least about this; I can't imagine an ISP not notifying its customers about this kind of cutoff.

It's a shame... Northpoint seems like they provided a good, reasonably priced, reliable service, especially when compared with, say, Verizon.

Re:MSN DSL customers really screwed...

[Wolfstar]

Um, not sure where you got your information, but I'd like to provide a different view.

I do commercial Level 2 Support for a large national ISP. We had a bunch of customers through Northpoint, and the network went down hard yesterday. My personal view on why they went under is that their support was horrendous.

When your line went down - and if you have DSL, your line WILL go down someday - you call into your ISP. Your ISP verifies their side, and then called Northpoint to open a ticket. You called into Tier 1, which basically took calls, noted down information, and read back to you what was posted on their support website. This info was largely useless, because as recently as October, right around when the deal with Verizon first came up, Northpoint used a paper-only trouble ticket system. Yes. Paper Only.

If, after two or three hours, the ISP hasn't heard anything or been contacted for testing, with Covad, you call up and talk to someone who can do the testing. With Northpoint, you had no choice but to call the Tier 1 folks, who promptly told you that there was nothing that could be done because they have four hours to respond. (I once called 2 hours in, sat on hold for an hour and 45 minutes for Tier 1, and when they picked up, told me that there was nothing that could be done, then hung up on me.) No matter how far you escalated the issue within their management, no matter how long the ticket had been open with them, you could not call any sooner than four hours and expect anything to get done.

Eventually, once the deal with Verizon fell through, this began to change. Rumor has it that they started using a computerized ticketing system at some point in there, and they removed the four-hour requirement. We were provided numbers that went directly to the Tier 2 testers, and sometimes things actually got done. There were still annoyances - if a customer went down, and it was determined that their router or DSL Modem went bad, a tech was sent out, tested with a spare modem, verified it, and then took the spare modem with them when they left!!!! Issues such as this were the norm, and why Northpoint went under is that their Partner ISPs - like us, who had over a thousand DSL customers through them - were constantly given the runaround when it came to support, and they didn't realize this until they were right on the brink, with Verizon backing out and virtually no hope of actually securing investment capital.

Northpoint had bad business practices and poor support, realized it way too late to do anything about it, and paid the price. Maybe their service was cheaper and more reliable than Verizon. But don't forget that you get what you pay for, and don't make the mistake of thinking that they were a decent company.

Re:what about the customers ?

[Noer]

I don't know what you can really do. But I know why this happened.

Verizon did the usual Bell Atlantic thing and made like they were going to buy out Northpoint... and then dropped it, causing Northpoint to look really bad and be unable to get other investors (as the other investors had already been scared away by Verizon). So Northpoint was screwed, and Verizon gets rid of a competitor.

This kind of crap should be examined by the feds.

Re:This isn't a tragedy of some sort

[cavemanf16]

You are all failing to realize that this guy probably works for/runs a small business! So it would not make sense for him to have ISDN, T1 and OC3 backup connections with a Beowulf cluster of servers. Some businesses just need an internet connection for their employees to go looking for info, work on webpages for other companies, etc. so it does behoove him to get an inexpensive broadband line. And DSL is the cheapest alternative out there for broadband up and down streams. In retrospect, I'm sure he'll look for more assurances from a broadband provider in the future that service will not go dark suddenly.

Before you mark me as flamebait, realize that there are companies out there using the internet for reasons other than hosting websites. Head hunters, webpage designers, etc. do not need an expensive T1 line, just always on connectivity.

Fast, Cheap, Reliable -- Pick Two

[ccandreva]

OK -- I'm an ISP. But . .

The biggest problem with DSL is it came out of the gate at bargain basement prices. The CLEC's left themselves little margin, and cut huge deals for some companies that promised to sell a million lines -- ie Flashcomm. They couldn't do it, not even selling below cost.

Many small ISPs tried to compete on price, and can't. Covad was selling lines to me for more than Flashcom was selling to end users.

Now Flashcomm's Chapter 11, and I'm making a nice living. Not that Covad couldn't go under and screw me and my customers too.

You want RELIABLE faster net access ? Get ISDN. Faster than a modem, not likely to disappear without any warning, and higher in the priority queue to get fixed.

Re:This isn't a tragedy of some sort

[gluebard]

Business DSL, Business DSL, Business DSL.. get it? This is not a minor inconvenience for businesses. With 30-45 day lead times for most any braodband alternative except cable this leaves many businesses including mine seriously screwed. Our office is dark now, we'll be working from home cable connections until Megapath can switch us to Rhythms and/or we get business cable installed. Far from being a inconvenience, this is shaping up as one of the worst user disasters in the brief life of the commerical Internet. Over 100,000 broadband connections going dark across the country representing many more users. There have been outages affecting far more users but not for 3-4 weeks.