Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.