EBone/KPNQwest Network Shutting Down

reginald.barclay writes "As KPNQwest has filed for bankruptcy some time ago, also EBone, which they aquired some months ago, goes down the drain. Together, these two companies carried betwenn 1/3 and 1/2 of European IP Traffic (and, in the case of KPNQwest, an unknown portion of voice). Employees at Ebone were laid off last week and told to abandon their NOC. But instead of getting drunk and over with it, they occupied their former workplace. Now even their time is running out, and one of Europes oldest backbone carriers will probably be shut down today, at 1700 CET. I wonder how many of their customers (mostly ISPs and VBCs themselves) have managed to run to the competition in time. Nevertheless, I expect the routing in large parts of Europe to be very interesting (in the chinese sense, of course) over the coming weekend and early next week." Update: 06/14 18:02 GMT by M : Apparently KPNQwest's creditors have agreed to pay to keep the place going until the end of June.

Comments

First sign?

[amorsen]

According to Internet Traffic Report the router defra229-tc.ebone.ne is not responding. Several other KPNQwest/Ebone routers are still up though.

Re:25%-50% of traffic on Ebone?

[RocketJeff]

Ebone carries about 25%, the rest of KPNQwest carries another 25% - the total company carries about 50%. Ebone was never really integrated into the rest of the KPNQwest network (hadn't had time before the company went splat).

Re:The UK

[hollow_man]

As Netcom UK we are now in control of large parts of the UK network and we fully intend to keep it running for as long as possible. However our main concern are the transmission links as they're all managed from Brussels.

As the Netcom entity we're pretty secure although we anticipate a mad scrambling to reconfigure part of our network, we will also try to keep the majority of the UK Ebone customers online, but all of that depends on the extend of the backbone shutdown, so Irish customers might be not as "lucky". But AS5571 should be largely okay.

what's the sound of BGP flapping?

[mdouglas]

BGP statistics pertaining to KPNQwest AS286 also, keep your eye on NANOGfor any info related to the impact of the shutdown.

Execution of KPNQwest postponed by 5 weeks.

[pa3gvr]

According to this article (in Dutch only) Belgian unions (their members) are not going to shutdown the NOC in Hoeilaart(B).
They have come to an agreement with the curators. The curators have offered 40 employees a 5 week contract so the NOC can stay in operation with a skeleton crew. Employees of other NOCs ( 200 in total) around Europe were offered similar contracts.

It will probably be a 5 week long last breath.

Sjaak.

KPNQwest Finland will continue to run

[vinsci]

According to this press release today (in Finnish) there have been several offers to buy the Finnish daughter company of KPNQwest.

[...] "In any way, our future looks secured and we are able to continue servicing our [Finnish] customers as in the past. The national network and the services of our customers works normally during the process. In addition, we have secured internation IP connections, in case there are disturbances in our Eurorings network." [...]

Re:Nice of the NOC folks

[Paul Jakma]

it's extremely unlikely to be OC-anything, cause it's in Europe and they use the STM/SDH system. :)

--paulj

Re:The UK

[RussGarrett]

If you take a look at the LINX peering matrix (warning: insanely large HTML table), you'll see that JAnet (JNT) a.k.a. UKERNA is peered with many other providers, including UUNet and PSI, so no, I don't think they're going to disappear overnight.

Re:KPNQWest network will continue to run....

[Idaho]

Well, they are bankrupt, so they would only pay their SLA obligation from what's left after the bankrupt process..

Yup...but you should read carefully (or maybe I didn't explain well enough). It's like this:

• KPNQWest has gone bankrupt. They can't pay their employees. Still, some are working (for over a week now) for free, just because they feel they can't 'pull the plug' on their network.
• KPN has *not* gone bankrupt. It's KPN that has contracts with Very Big Customers and guaranteed them that their (KPNQWest provided) connections would always work (they can make promises like this because they own 40% of KPNQWest stock).

So, it's very much in KPN's interest that the network stays running. That is also why they are paying millions a day (by my understanding) to keep things running.

Because as soon as they don't, they will

1. Loose some VERY big customers
2. Get some REAL nasty lawsuits claiming the damage for breaking their contractual obligations. Those will be multi-million dollar law-suits, which KPN is very likely to loose.

And because KPN, as any large telecom provider (at least in Europe at the moment), is - to say the least - not exactly doing great by itself either, they will probably watch out REAL good not to let something like this happen!

UPDATE: Won't be shutdown today.

[egghat]

See the update at Heise (google translated). Or use the original in German.

Have a nice weekend.

Bye egghat.

ITs still hanging on?

[weycrest]

PRESS RELEASE

We are pleased to announce the hard-line strategy of the Union-led volunteers at Ebone in Belgium appears to have finally reaped rewards. Sufficient funds have been provided to maintain operations throughout Europe. This vital capital will be used to cover operational costs for 2 weeks. This includes the salaries for 200 people, of which 40 people will be from the Belgian Operations Centre. During this time, we are very confident of reaching a positive outcome to the negotiations which are continuing to find a buyer for the Ebone network.

It can therefore be confirmed that the now passed deadline of 17.00 C.E.T. for a network shutdown, will not be executed.

A further press release will follow in due course.

Employees of Ebone, with their Unions

Resp.editors. Henri Jean Ruttiens, secretary BBTK Setca