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Covad Planning For Chapter 11
Logic writes: "According to their press release, Covad Communications Group, Inc. is preparing to file for Chapter 11 protection for restructuring. One of the most important points in the release is Covad Communications Group, Inc.'s operating companies, which provide DSL services to customers, are not expected to be included in the court-supervised proceeding and will continue to operate in the ordinary course of business without any court imposed restrictions,' meaning that the operating companies which deal with service providers (such as Speakeasy, who have endorsed Covad's action) will continue to operate unfettered by the court restrictions, and end-user services should be unaffected. Hopefully." As a Speakeasy customer (at home), I sincerely hope that my connection doesn't go away.
Yeah, and tell me now who offers a reasonable level of support to actually know this. Not the Bells!
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
How is this off-topic? He talks about DSL providers. Moderators are retards.
Hehe.
I got two Cisco 675s when I signed up.
I tried calling twice to return the 'extra', but no dice.
As it happened, the extra one came in handy to upgrade firmware without risking downtime due to a failed flash, etc.
This is partially true. You can sell it if you offer an asymetric pipe and throw QoS out the window. The home consumer is willing to do this. But for businesses which require high speed upstream bandwidth, high reliability and QoS gaurantees, $40.00 / month is way too low. All the companies which tried to sell Business class service at these prices did a huge disservice to the market by raising their expectations with unmaintainably low prices.
When Northpoint went under, my ISP sent me an email saying that it would be up for another 30 days so that they could switch us over to someone else. Two days later the connection died permenantly.
I just got the email about Covad from my ISP yesterday. Hopefully this time I'll at least have time to swi
I was using Covad as my line provider. My ISP decided that they weren't going to do business with Covad any longer, and apparently, as part of resolving disputed charges between the two, Covad made them agree not to offer DSL to the transferred customers for 1 year. Covad gave 3 weeks notice that we had to transfer to Earthlink or be shut down. So, I will soon be without DSL for a couple days in the gap between Covad's shutting down my service and Verizon to my new provider. And I still don't have an arrangement I like (the new ISP offers multiple static IP's, but has a per-month bandwidth cap. The old one had routable blocks of 8, and no cap.) If they crater, maybe I'll end up with a chance to get back the DSL solution I really want.
And I doubt they'll be around after Friday, even though the person I spoke to there said that customers would have 30 days notice before they pulled the plug.
i know you're out there we saw a shooting star
this sig steers like a cow. and i can prove it
I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
At least you can choose not to have PPPoE. Some of us are stuck. And will be for quite some time.
If it weren't for Prozac, I'd probably take out a shotgun on the next Verizon truck I see.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I work for an ISP who's DSL was provided by one of Covad's competitors, and promised the same thing, and yet all our DSL was cut off also.
Never mind that I was on the SAME CO as I would have been for BellSouth, using ALL of the same circuits. Why? I was told that BellSouth did not currently contractually allow DSL companies to connect users of other local carriers!
Deregulation? Right...
Seen any BadMarketing lately?
test
I am not surprised at all. Covad, had terrible customer service, identical pricing and no one knew about them.
At $49.95 per month, it's $10 more than what your looking for, but there's no setup or install costs.
yes, but here in chicago (and i think in illinois in general) rhythms IS telocity. so i might be screwed.
Mindy: "Well...desserts aren't always right." Homer: "But they're so sweet!"
Attention Investors
All you base are belong to us
My cable is a static IP. Comcast@home. Although service is piss-poor and it's down 1 day out of 10. ...
...had informed me that this would probably be happenning in the future. though they didn't even last the year, which was the projection. i was a northpoint customer through uunet and lost the service... t1=$$$ but on the possitive side, nothing beats a t1 or greater!
actually the Baby Bells want DSL. They just don't want to sell it at a loss. It costs over $100/month to have a DSL customer with internet access and a decent level of support. (Reference: http://isp-lists.isp-planet.com/isp-dsl/0107/msg00 046.html)
With Covad filing for bankruptcy and Rhythms doing the same, I'd like to put in a plug for DirectTV DSL (formerly Telocity). They have resonable prices and are owned by Hughes Electronics so presumably they're a more stable...right? One more inportant advantage, they provide static IP addresses.
Given one hour to live, the student replied: "I'd spend it with professor FP who can make an hour seem like a lifetime."
That's what's happening to all the independent DSL providers. The Bells charge them for rental of the lines. Rent that the Bells don't have to pay. Therefore, the Bells can offer the same connection at a lower cost.
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So that brings the score up to CLECs/Broadband co.s 3, RBOCs 3000.
--G
Verizon charges only $20 a month for DSL in my area. But through arm twisting speakeasy is $60 a month because verizon wants more money. The fact that verizon only charges 20 a month shows me the cost of installation is not problem with the isp's but its due to price goughing by the babby bells. In my area I would rather pay for high unreliable dsl internet access then to pay AOL-Time/Warner for AOL cable modem. Shudder.
http://saveie6.com/
I hope speakeasy doesn't get wacked too. They have been great for me.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise - William Shakespeare
Yes, you have a great connection there, and I wish I had it as well, but I have had MANY different cable providers in the past in MANY different areas in the US and none of them had decent speed. They are all capped at 128 or 256kbit uploads and some are capped on the downloads even. There are a few areas that still have decent uploads with their downloads, but they are only something like 2% of all cable areas, so consider yourself VERY lucky! And since you are with @home, dont be surprised if one day your upload suddenly is capped.
a couple months ago
Looks like it's back to cable modem for me...
this has been coming for a while. Too bad.
I have provisioned DSL accounts for several offices and clients, and one thing I have experienced with EVERY vendor is some version of the following:
1. Order service.
2. Get DSL modem/router in mail.
3. Tech comes to install, brings preconfigured modem with him.
4. Tech leaves, but doesn't take other modem with him.
5. Months go by, nobody ever asks for the extra modem.
Currently, I have a tall stack of Flowpoint, 3com, Netopia and Lucent routers in my server room - 11 of them. How can anyone make money in this way? Northpoint, I know you are gone and don't want the routers - but Covad? NAS? Rythms? Do you want your hardware?
I have a Qwest line ordered - maybe I'll get two Ciscos!
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
If you can find me DSL for $40/mo with the same start-up costs as dialup (i.e. zero) I'm your guy...point the way and I'll pay for DSL.
There area lot of people that can't afford to drop $200+ on startup costs and pay the $60, 70, 80 a month. As was pointed out in the first reply to your post, they have one line and dial in on it.
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
Our secret, we have our own network. We only rent the lines from Verizon for a little while. Then we switch the customers onto our network. We tried it the other way and almost had to close the company. It's all how management runs the company.
The Bells are screwing themselves. There's no reason those cable lines couldn't carry voice. Once cable has enough penetration that's what will happen. That's when you'll see lower prices ($40) for DSL, with good QoS. But not any time in the next year or two.
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I have a cable modem with Charter@Home. Download speed is 2500-2700kb/s. Upload is 700-900kb/s. In the past 4 months, the line was down for about 15 minutes total. I pay $40/mo. What does this mean? Two things: 1) it all depends on who runs the show locally and 2) you pay way too much for your broadband :-)
My parents love my high-speed access at home and the office, but they will be on 56K until the day they die because they can't justify spending more then $20/mo for dial-access.
It's got to get a lot cheaper before the bandwagon really gets rolling.
Qwest DSL increased rates take effect today! That's how long it will take.
Double? I am paying $109 a month for 384k/384k SDSL. Now, my download speeds are capped at 40k/s, same with upload speeds. I, too, am a Speakeasy subscriber, and I would much rather use dial-up than pay double of what I am paying right now for this connection.
"So once again, please charge more Covad - Speakeasy is lightyears ahead of Verizon in terms of quality and I will pay a very large premium for that."
I agree that Speakeasy is better than Verizon in terms of it's quality, but I also must mention that you already are paying a hefty premium for the "superior" service. Yes, that's right. Read the speakeasy FAQ.
Forget Aeron chairs, check out the stuff in their auction.
Seen any BadMarketing lately?
Covad DSL: Service should continue unaffected through the Chapter 11 proceedings.
Qwest DSL: Service will continue indefinately, until two hours later when you must recycle power of your Cisco DSL router due to "Red Code scanning". Service may or may not be affected in a couple of months when you are silently switched to MSN IP services.
i swear my userid used to be lower.
I don't know Covad's full story but I feel kind of bad for them because their problems may not entirely be their fault. I tried for 3 months last year to get a DSL line, Covad was always prepared to do it but were dependent on Verizon. Verizon never showed up for a single appointment and consistently reported that they did and had no access to the property. Turns out that was their standard approach to dealing with other companies customers. Pretty hard to survive in a market where you live under the thumb of the ruling monopoly.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
I was a Northpoint subscriber (through Best/Verio). When Northpoint cratered, I decided to go with Speakeasy, one of the highest-rated DSL providers around. I knew that their supplier, Covad, was having trouble, but hoped that enough Northpoint orphans would switch over to Covad to help keep them afloat.
Now it looks like Covad might crater, too. When that happens, what is my remaining choice? Pacific Bell.
I will not get Pacific Bell DSL. I do not want PPPoE (which is a lame attempt to pretend that an always-on connection can be billed like POTS). I do not want ADSL, I want SDSL (I want to run servers, dammit). I do not want metered bandwidth. I do want static IP. I do want competent, responsive service personnel. And I do not want up "upgrade" to T1 (because I don't want to get soaked to the tune of $300/month for a lousy 128Kbits).
*sigh* I guess I start exploring wireless options next...
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
heh "sunshine"
heheh "tits up"
I use jump.net here in austin, and they provide excellent service, but they charge for it. I pay $150/month for a guaranteed 1500/384 connection w/ 10 static ip's. I trade stocks for a living(yes, still, and it is still a living), and I am more than happy to pay it. Jump.net is owned by Allegiance Telecom.
My service costs around $50 per month and somewhere I read that $35 of that goes straight to Verizon. That leaves only $15 for Covad and my ISP.
Talk about being screwed by a monopoly. Verizon's making out like a bandit whether they have you as a customer or not.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
How Does Covad Spell Relief? Chapter 11
Some of you may have read Covad Communications' announcement today regarding its negotiations with bondholders and the subsequent "pre-packaged" Chapter 11 filing. The release clearly details Covad's plan to successfully restructure its business and continue with its long-term goal of providing premium DSL connectivity and choice in the broadband market space.
The primary item of note in the release, and that which concerns many of you, is that the potential Chapter 11 filing will affect the parent company, Covad Communications Group, Inc., but will in no way affect any of its operating companies. Due to this essential distinction, ALL of the Covad operating companies (which include vendor relationships and the maintenance of DSL circuits) will continue to operate without any court-imposed restrictions. Basically, this announcement will not affect your Speakeasy DSL service in any way.
We here at Speakeasy are thrilled by this decision and determined that we will continue our vendor relationship with Covad in all established service areas. We are in full support of Covad's efforts to restructure, and believe that this is exactly what the industry needs. We are all early-adopters of a technology that is under constant development, and, as many of you know, residing on the bleeding edge is not without its risks. Thankfully, this announcement will help ebb the speculation on the future of the broadband industry and contribute to revitalized growth.
Certainly we intend to monitor the developments of this restructure, and will keep our press site (http://www.speakeasy.net/press) up to date with all breaking news regarding Covad's reorganization.
http://www.rhythms.com/news/pr/bulletin_board.c
MSN is actually gobbling up the ILEC's, so why bother with a CLEC?
Here's the proof.
Covad has had so much troubles in the past, this is no suprise. Its a wonder they lasted this long with their style business practice. http://www.animeshon.net
can you see her bush? .
This is exactly what ticked me off about Kozmo. They actually had something (their service) that I would have paid a premium for and yet they still attempted to undercut tradional stores that sold the same products. If they had just charged I little more I could still rent videos in my underwear. So once again, please charge more Covad - Speakeasy is lightyears ahead of Verizon in terms of quality and I will pay a very large premium for that. Besides, I write my DSL off on my taxes anyway so it's not a big deal.
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
I only say this because I have seen a few posts regarding Covad pulling their weight, but Verizon falling short, therefore making Covad look bad. I am moving in to my new apartment next week, and I have to choose between Cable modem and DSL. Coincidently, when I went to check on the remodeling progress a Verizon van was parked in the lot, so I decided I would ask about DSL. He told me I could probably get DSL. Then I told him that "too be honest
His response? 'off the record
Need anyone say more about the big floppy V?
Now here is my question:
If I am able to rule out Verizon in one easy investigative effort is it really anything less than incompetance to factor them into your business plan? I think it is incompetence unelss there really was no other choice, then the incompetence was starting the venture in the first place.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
DSL comes in over an existing phone line. They may have had to lay some more wire inside the house, but there should only be one line directly from the CO.
Wow...that's unfortunate. However, has anyone expected differently? How long until rates start going up now that the big competitors are all dying? Any guesses?
Lousy customer service + poor order processing + negative profit margins on every line = Chapter 11
http://public.wsj.com/sn/y/SB99704058777829496.
It would be premature to predict that their DSL oferring will remain an essential business offering as opposed to the Dish Satellite offering.
You (DirecTV DSL users) could end up in the same position as Covad soon.
Sorry to hang on to yer scintillating comments Strom; felt a strange need to make a public display of it and connecting to your post seemed to be the surest way to make sure this sad declaration is buried and forgotten, safe from the prying eyes of the average soul.
Yeah, I'm roight off this slashdot mate, it reminds me too much of shouted conversations in seedy bars where a horrible band is generating a howling dissonance and everyone is pretending to be alone at home, shouting through a wall.
Half a year of putting my 2 cents on the internet the conclusion I've come to is it just makes me sad. 99 out of a hundred people don't give a damn about truth or learning or anything except pumping their little egos up, pounding their special ideological pulpet, winning rhetorical points. enough.
the worst thing is I find myself getting sucked into responding to the jingo, the rhetoric, the baiting, the whole ignominous free for all of all thee disimpersoned egos duking it out. Lose my love and become another nasty ego monster, proving something. As if I didn't know who and what I am.
But I ain't no kid anymore, pushing thirty I better decide to be too big for all this folderol, this gardyloo. So goodbye, cruel slashdot, Strom, we'll always have Minsk, thanks for being a hook to hang on, and congratulations for being almost as big a pariah as your congressional counterpart.
I hope nobody sees this and if you do then do yourself a favor and ignore the hell of it, its just masturbation of the intellectual/textual variety. Maybe when I finifh my masterpiece I'll come in and be a karma whore to promote it, make nice nice with everyone, yes, open source, livertarianism, free beer, free speech, free love and free Mumia. What else? Reply if you like but I ain't talking.
further, desponent, sayeth not.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
And I've actually had great service through Covad and my operating company... 30 days from order to being online, and I got a free router out of the deal because the tech wasn't supposed to bring one (and before people bitch about me stealing, I called them and they said to just keep it...)
.technomancer
Having dealt with Covad on many occasions (each time resulted in lots of Tylenol and alcohol), I think they need to restructure things around.
..by the sheer ineptitude of providers like Concentric/XO Communications ("new logo changes everything" etc).
I had a T-1 installed. Worked beautifully. Moved DNS, mail servers, etc. Cancel Northpoint DSL service. Unplug DSL after a week or so. XO, the DSL provider, calls me to note that my service is down. Reply that I've cancelled my service, so please, don't worry about it. Covad calls the next day; we received a trouble ticket from XO regarding your DSL* no, really, I've cancelled it, please disregard. A week later, Verizon shows up for repairs; I send the tech off to lunch. Covad called me back three more times and Verizon called me once more.
If either the DSL resellers or the telcos owning the local loops had their crap together, maybe companies like Covad and Northpoint wouldn't go south.
-p
...and not have to pay most of it back! I'm beginning to believe that certain unscrupulous people are starting to take advantage of the talking-head spawned hype surrounding the "dot-com meltdown" in order to get out from under their financial responsibilities. It also illustrates a truism: No matter how much money is raised, a poorly led company will find some way to piss it all away quickly.
You're using her as bait, Master!
1) "Competition has no other choice than to buy product from Baby Bell."
2) "Undercut the competition until it's gone, then raise prices."
Number 1 sounds like a monopoly to me.
Number 2 sounds like a monopoly violating anti-trust law.
Contact your Better Business Bureau. Find some smart lawyers who want to make a buck. Does anyone else think it's time for a class-action suit?
[Verizon just raised DSL prices in the Pittsburgh area too. I'm just lucky that CMU decided to raise their prices as well and keep running their private happy little DSL service for students & profs]
1) Jato
2) Northpoint
3) Covad...
I kinda feel bad for them, but life goes on. BTW, I wasn't fired despite my 'skill' at choosing. At least this time it looks like Covad will continue to provide service to their DSL folks.
I love my speakeasy account! They never go down, always on connection, and plenty of upload bandwidth. Sure, I spend $200 a month on the 1.1mbit SDSL service from them, but hey, what else is there, cable?? HA! Cable is a joke these days... you get ISDN upload speed and if you use that, it criples your download speed. ADSL is also a joke... it has the same upload speed as cable, but costs more and also less download speed. Broadband is fast upload and download in my book... if you can't give me a good upload with my download, I dont want you as my provider. Can you imagine a world after companies like Verizon run through it? Everyone will have these connections that can download faster than you could ever imagine, but where you gonna download from? Your friend?? Hell no, your friend has verizon and has a 128kbit upload cap. Your office?? No again, your office has a 256kbit upload cap. But wait... Verizon has a great upload limit for themselves, lets go download from them so they can censor our web experience all to hell and back. Maybe they can replace certain words in web pages you download with their own... "Verizon"="God" or vise versa. I used to think cable was gonna be the big answer to a lot of problems, but nope, they fixed that by capping all the cable companies, so now you not only have a shit connection in the evenings, you also have a limited connection during the rest of the day as well. Just the other day I was praying for fiber optic in my home, but you'd probably have to get it through verizon or something and you'd see the verizon guy out there every weekend rubbing mud into the optics. (only if you are not with verizon) I stick with my cell phone now instead of having a verizon home phone just because I hate all of the bell companies. And I would go with wireless over switching to verizon dsl.
yeah, except all the people that had a second line were into the internet a lot and realized this a long time ago... they all have dsl now! the people that CAN'T justify paying more than $20 are the ones that DON'T have a second line, or they would be able to justify it. Most people I know just have 1 line and dial-up.
Can I write my senator? Say what? Please pass laws to help people like Covad? If anyone knows what can be done pro-actively to avoid comeing back under the really ugly, warty, fungus-fingernailed thumb of PacBell (San Francisco) please respond...
closed minded is as closed minded does
What about small business that rely on DSL for there websites and connections (such as the one i work for). We had a hell of a time when Northpoint turned off the network with no warning.. Now what are we supposed to do if Covad and Rhythems go out of business?
We can't afford T1 speed or anything close to it and cable modems dont normally offer Static IPs etc?
Guess were SOL.
Dial up account is $20, second line is $20. If the high speed connection is $40, it's a wash. The reason it's not is the Baby Bells. They don't seem to want DSL, so they charge an arm and a leg for it. The future is probably cable modem.
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I'd like to take this moment to thank Verizon for using their existing revenue streams from voice telephony to undersell & frustrate all attempts to compete with them in the DSL space. All those hours of botched installations, refusal to access co-lo slots and intentional negligence really paid off. With the bankruptcy of Covad, and the ensuing "kick-em-while-they're-down" lawsuits from Verizon, we can look forward to a future with one clear choice for high speed access: Verizon or Verizon, @whatever-the-hell-they-charge/month or else!
Thanks guys!
I never had a problem with BlueStar in the pre-Covad days, but a few months ago they were having network outages across the east coast. Ack! We were already shopping around for a new ISP when we got The Letter that says that BlueStar is being shut down. No mention of Covad DSL, transferring service, or any of that. TWO WEEKS LATER a Covad rep calls to try to transfer me over to Covad DSL. I say, "Thanks, but we've already made other arrangements. Besides, if I signed with you now, I'd have two weeks of internet downtime" (BellSouth takes a month to install a DSL line, and no, they won't use the old one).
My question is, why did Covad shut down BlueStar the way that it did, and force out thousands of customers that they didn't need to? I'm sure that part of it was that there was overlap with existing Covad DSL services, but there were some areas of the country where BlueStar was the ONLY DSL provider; those businesses that relied on BlueStar are now back to dial-up for internet access.
But, again...why didn't Covad try to transition BlueStar customers into the Covad network, and gradually shut down the redundant areas? Business 101: it's a whole heck of a lot cheaper to keep an existing customer than to find a new one.
I just signed up with another DSL provider who has happily informed me that they have scooped up so many former BlueStar customers that their router supplier is having trouble cranking out the hardware fast enough.
Frankly, I'm not surprised that Covad is going under, there seems to be a lot of deficiencies at the top. They buy a business that's making money and shut them down. They force out thousands of customers that their own sales people are scrambling to get back. My only advice to those considering Covad is to run away as fast as possible.
I remember reading here a few months ago about the major telephone companies going out and harrassing all the small isp's into paying up fee's. Basically under the ftc rules clecs( competing local exchange carriers) have to buy access only from the top 5 monopolies in the industries under price caps of course. Through corporate lobbying, isp's now fall under a competing local exchange carrier so AT&T, verizon adn all the baby bells are fucking these small isps including covard left and right and demanding high fee's and even sometimes bottlenecking their lines to make them look slow. I know someone who ordered coavrd dsl and waited 4 MOTNHS BECAUSE VERZION REFUSED TO CONNECT HIM!
.NT/hailstorm because most pc's will be smart terminals by then.
Thats right covard has to use verizon only in New York state thanks to some lobbying by verizon. Verizon is the anti-christ of all high speed connections here. Their serive has maybe a %80 uptime! no joke, its that bad! THey want to force this down our throats at any costs all in the name of bussiness.
THis really pisses me off. If any of you reading this use's DLS speakeasy and noticed their rates go up, well thank good old baby bells for increasing the prices. Notice a baby bells dsl lines only cost maybe 20 a month while speakeasy is 60. Hmmm I wonder why.
Usually the ftc makes sure these abuses never come but they are being bought by lobbiests left and right by oil companies, media companies, and now mega-telco companies.
If we don't do something except high speed access to installations to stall to a halt and pay $150 a month for lousy service when they finally arrive to your area due to lack of competition. ITs the small guys like covard who are the ones laying cable and not verizon and yet verizon is winning by buying a government to squash the good guys. THis bothers me more then an abusive software company owning the operating system world. Without a network in 10 years a computer is nearly useless. I expect high speed internet accessing will be required by WIndows via
http://saveie6.com/
..and Covad said not to worry, we'll pick up the slack. By this time I was back using a modem. Glad I didn't listen! So much for the Covad "safety net."
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I think M$ style would be more like, "Here's a pile of money to bail^H^H^H^H begin innovating, also, here's a pile of Microsoft software and content product you will push, i.e. all your customers will get their service through Microsoft or a Microsoft Partner. Please upgrade all servers to IIS and all desktops to Win2000, and eradicate all individuals who defend the Cancer that is Open Source and/or Linux. Now just hand me your soul and I'll be on my way."
® Microsoft Corporation, 2001
© Microsoft Corporation, 2001
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Most DSL type connections require that you have a 2nd line installed, which means the actualcost is; second line=$20, high speed connection=$50, which means the actual total cost=>$70 mo.+ installation ($200+)for highspeed.
Compare that to $20 for dialup, $20 for 2nd line=$40 mo. for dialup
I don't see how they can justify charging us $29 per head for JUST the local loop and then selling the entire service for $35 themselves, but thats what they did.
This is really a shame. I suppose the MaBells et al. could simply claim DSL is not the only way to connect to the 'net -- thus, they are not being monopolistic.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
Late last week I got a letter in the mail from my SDSL provider, DSL.net stating that they were switching us over to Covad in the next few weeks. DSL.net has been having problems (according to FuckedCompany.com). Wonder if that is gonna happen now?
Oh well, at least I am not the one that made the decision to use this outfit...
I run a dinky little ISP in Colorado, since 1992. We were the first to provide commercial ISDN-speed internet access (even ahead of the local phone company!). When DSL hit the scene, and the telcos created all the insane and unrealistic expectations about the service, I stood up in front of the 200 or so members of the Rocky Mountain Internet User's Group, and I told them that DSL, as priced, was not a long-term winning strategy for businesses. Bandwidth has an actual market value, which is entirely being discounted in the business plans of these startups, amid the sheer lemming optimism of foolish shareholders.
Simply put, you can't supply T1 (or 0.5 T1) speeds for $40/month. To say nothing of the capital investment requirements to build out the infrastructure, which are enormous. Or the tech support staff expenses. Or the marketing. Or the fact that the telcos STILL have a stranglehold on America's communications infrastructure, and internally sell their services to their own internet spin-offs at far lower cost than to their competitors.
But now, the media and the general public are shocked, shocked I tell you, that these companies are falling away like so many body parts off a leper.
Well, DUH.
Result: the Baby Bells win again. The consumers will have to continue to put up with poor tech support, idiotic customer care, and diminishing bandwidth. Oh, and the price will go up.
You got what you deserved, by not supporting your local ISP enough.
I was a loser in the Northpoint fiasco.. Because nobody else would give me DSL at that time, I had to go with a cable modem. And while the cable modem kicks ass (however, support is pathetic), I resent having to do business with ATT (who put me in that very situation by not buying the Northpoint subscribers).
Around the same time this happened, I did eventually get the option of Covad. Reading this, I am glad that I passed. While this isn't chapter 11 for the DSL customers (YET!), how far away can it really be? How do you retain techs when the company is in chapter 11? Why would anyone good stick around?
I read about this problem a few months ago. Covad has already taken over 100,000 accounts from Northpoint and couple more dead ISPs. They have partnerships with many ISPs. Covad provides over 40% of the xDSL lines in the US but can't turn things around? Yeah right! Now the Bells will win AGAIN and will offer you crappy plans for "home" use. If you want a GOOD plan you will have to get a business account that cost triple! Wallstreet pricks really piss me off!! It was a pain to get ADSL and it took a couple of weeks to have my account setup properly. But since then I havn't had ANY problems. The service works great 24hrs a day. When I had cable it was only a matter of time until the bandwidth usage would be maxed out and the service was USELESS after 7pm! I would go back to dial-up then they would call me back and say, "Sir please try our service again. We just completed the upgrade in your area". A couple months later same problem! Thanks for nothing you greedy bastards!!
Those of you who believe that telephone service should be a regulated monopoly, you are killing the independent DSL industry.
The FCC should mandate that no local or state entity should be able to grant a monopoly telecommunications franchise, period.
As someone who was DSL-teased by Covad for over 10 months with nothing to ultimately show for it, I dance in the streets today.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
So how long will it take for Microsoft to come and gobble them up into MSN? Looks to me like they're ripe for the assimilating.
I have RR (a Time-Warner cable modem for those who are unfamiliar), and it's great. I often hit download speeds in excess of 3mbit/s. Contrary to the common myth about shared bandwidth, I have never seen my connection slow to anywhere near that of a 56k.
My typical upload speed ranges from 500kbit/s to 700kbit/s. Sure that's not 1mbit/s, but I'm not paying $200/mo either. I pay $40/mo. Also, I have a pseudo-static IP address. Technically, it's DHCP, but it hasn't changed in 3 months.
I work for a small ISP in SE Kansas and I've seen firsthand how difficult it is to compete. In my market SWBell wanted to charge us $29 per head to sell DSL to customers in our area. After that I still have to pay normal ISP costs associated with bandwidth, customer support, in addition to end user equipment. We were prepared to do this a full year before SWBell was going to come in and offer DSL in our area because the equipment was already there waiting to be used. Our plan was to offer dynamic IP's at a base service and then sell static IP's for a few dollars more. We would have had a reasonable upload cap of 384 ot 768, somewherein that area. We really had a good service planned, but we found out through a few contacts that SWBell was going to have a special when they offered DSL. $35 per month plus free equipment. We did the math and realized there was no way we could compete with that, so we didn't bother.
I don't see how they can justify charging us $29 per head for JUST the local loop and then selling the entire service for $35 themselves, but thats what they did.
In January we found out that prices have risen to $49 a month and there are no longer deals on equipment.
Now we see they have been doing this all over the country. The operating proceedure seems to be price the competition out of the market and then raise prices.
In the end everybody loses but SWBell. I don't know what the deal is with this, but I wish someone would have done something.
Sigs are awesome huh?
Yeah, so their service sucked (the technician was scheduled to do my install from "8am-12pm", but arrived at 1:30pm without apology), but I might just miss them. In the end, I did get DSL service with a static IP for about $50/month.
Now, sure, there's still Verizon (bleh), but I don't think I'd want to use them due to their penchant for PPPoE. So, when I move, I might just have to sign up for cable-modem service (yeah, it may not offer a static IP, but at least I wouldn't have to suffer through PPPoE).
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
I was a former northpoint customer. I thought Northpoints network/service was superior to covads but still covad has a good network.
They have a ton of customers, why aren't they making money?
It's extremely sad to see a product that is far superior to 56k dialup vanish relatively quickly.
Is no one managing these companies? Instead of slowly going out of business, why don't they budget and create a plan that will put them in the green?
To me it's simple, if you're not making enough at $40/customer to pay your employees and cover all the rest of the expenses, get rid of worthless employees and raise your prices to a profitable rate.
I've upgraded to T1 but it costs a bundle! Had I not been forced to upgrade, I certainly would have kept using SDSL.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Well, to look on the bright side, I do get a lot of Code Red attempts in my logs from Covad customer's IPs... maybe they can't afford the extra bandwidth? Maybe this is MS's plan all along (because we all know they released Code Red)? It's a CONSPIRACY I tell you!!!
(yes, for the sarcasm-impaired, this was a bad joke, brought to you by Miller Lite)
If I only had a job, I'd have less time on my hands for these cheezy posts... Hm, better post this AC...
People want bandwidth, they need bandwidth. The problems is the larger Phone companies want to strangle off the mom and pop isp's, then own the entire market. I ordered my DSL from Covad, Verizon came out and asked why I didnt order from them, and stated if I didn't switch, my order wouldn't go through. Totally illegal, but what could I do? I switched to verizon.
Also, Speakeasy is my current idsl isp, they have the best customer support I have seen in a larger ISP. But I hear thier customer service had to restructure, they were pretty bad.
They let me send email out through their SMTP servers, Verizon wouldn't. I even host my domain with a smaller hosting service, just because when I called and asked about getting SSH installed on the servers and telnet turned off, they forwarded me to the sys-admin, and she said somehow our server was skipped, and she installed it later that day.
This whole thing has me pissed off, its not bad enough the Telcos wont provide the service, they can run the people who do out of business. All with our Federal Governments blessings.
I'm paying $130/month to my ISP for my dedicated 128K ISDN circuit and $60/month to the ILEC for the ISDN line itself. Why? Because I have no other option for high speed access. My apartment building has some kind of whacked out contract where the cable company (who DOES support cable modems in my area) isn't allowed to service the building. I'm moving out next year when my lease is up to an area where I have the option of both DSL from the ILEC (because, let's be honest, all the CLECs offering DSL will be out of business in 6 months) and cable from the cable company. I consider my Internet access a vital utility at home and am not going to worry about a hundred bucks here or there.
Is impossible under the current conditions. Trust me, I used to work for a privately owned regional ISP attempting to succeed at selling DSL. They have you over a colossal barrel.
At the rates telcos charge for access to the network, small ISPs are stuck. Our company made less money off a $49.95/month DSL package than we did off a $20/month dialup account. Meanwhile, the telcos eat a loss, sell twice the bandwidth at the same price. We won't even get into SBC (the ILEC in question here) showing up late for our customer's install dates (if at all) and showing up late for repair dates (also if at all). The whole time marketing the heck out of their own services. Conflict of interest? Never. We couldn't even get a price break from SBC despite being one of their largest customers in the state for PRIs. (for our dialup POPs)
ILECs *hate* DSL. It eats into their fractional T1 market, which is much more profitiable. I don't buy the prices they charge to 3rd parties for DSL at all. A DSL line when done by a 3rd party looks just like a plain, unconditioned copper pair to the ILEC, with the exception that it is hooked up to a co-located DSLAM. If the ILECs charged nothing more than the cost of an alarm circuit, plus a modest co-lo fee, they would still make money off of 3rd party providers, but without being able to drive them out of town.
-Wintermute
Now...Speakeasy's billing is only a half-step ahead. They were trying to bill me for someone else's missed appointments...and in general have just not been too bright. So...will someone else pick up Covad's ball? Will it actually go through Qwest now? Accchhhhhhkkkkkk!!!! NO!!!!
Galego
Que Deus te de em dobro o que me desejas
[May God give you double that which you wish for me]
Disclaimer: I work for Covad but these comments are my own opinion.
Please take the time to read one of the articles such as this that have been written on the subject. Many of the highly moderated comments I have read have it wrong.
Basically, this is what is called a pre-packaged bankruptcy filing which means that the company and its creditors have agreed on a debt restructuring plan prior to the filing of backruptcy. The backruptcy filing is necessary to expeditiously remove the debt.
The bottom line is, if things go as planned, Covad comes out of bankrupcy with its customer base intact, without any debt, and only requiring an addional $200 million in funding to become cash flow possitive. The hope is that without the debt overhanging, the balance sheet will be in good enough shape to attract that funding. Best of all, the many Covad customers get to keep their service.
This is very different than the NorthPoint and Rhythms scenario.
in most areas this will leave the local telco for DSL services, kind of scary, I know PBI and SBC are not my dream local exchange carrier. And Covad was so dreamy too, fast orders, good customer care and good info on the process of the order, as for speakeasy, my fav ISP and what I wholey recommend, say it aint so! If covad goes they'll have to partner with a telco to survive, if they survive.
what do you mean you "didn't have to pay to get it in"? did you mean you didn't have to pay for your gill-friend?
About two months ago Internet America and covad had some kind of legal settment the basicly sold all of Internet americas dsl customers on covad dsl lines to covad, Me being one of those user was only given two choices switch to covad, or get another provider, Internet America would not even give me a strait anwser about what was going on, I found out about the transfere about 10 days before it was to occure. Needless to say I a very disapponted in the way that Internet America is handleing the situation, and now that covad is going chapter 11 I think there days are numbered. I think the solution is to get a line from the local Baby Bell.