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Covad Planning For Chapter 11

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the uh-oh-spaghetti-o dept.

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.

5 of 169 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Screwed by a Monopoly by alen · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I work for a local phone company in the NYC area, and it's not Verizon. We do local, long distance, DSL, and T1's. By the end of this year or sometime next year we should turn a profit. We aren't laying of. We're hiring. I made 8 accounts in the last two days.

    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.

  2. Screwed by a Monopoly by smartin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
  3. Covad was tripped up.. by mjolnir_ · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ..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

  4. I'd like to be able to borrow 1.4 billion... by Robber+Baron · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...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!

  5. Not terribly surprising... by artemis67 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I'm a former BlueStar customer...former, as in "last week". I signed up with BlueStar back when they were making money, long before Covad bought them out. Of course, Covad scoops them up and subsequently shuts them down, with barely a month's notice (which left my company without DSL for several days).

    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.