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C&W Bails Out
norskode writes "Not much to go on yet, but it seems that Cable & Wireless is bailing out of their US operations. This is a big provider of IP pipes, and they run the data centers they bought from the failed Exodus folks. There are a LOT of sites that live in their data centers, but no word yet on the disposition of those facilities."
A traceroute to google shows it's using cw.net and exodus.net
This could be bad...
The £6bn loss includes write-downs on the values of some of their purchases; they haven't actually lost that much cash.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
C&W does a wide range of things in the US, including operating colocation facilities, providing connectivity to businesses, operating dialup POPs, and running a major backbone. As a whole, these operations are losing $1 million a day (according to the article), but is it possible that one or two of them might actually be profitable? Will C&W completely pull out of the US, or will they keep a much more limited presense?
:-)
Another thing: will some operations be sold to other companies (and their customers transferred without loss of service), or will everything be turned off and each piece of equipment sold to the highest bidder?
I doubt anyone has the answers, but these are my questions.
Do I remember that Slashdot is/was hosted by Exodus? I'm too lazy to investigate.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
According to Netcraft, slashdot.org itself is using IPs owned by C&W.
MAE EAST isn't really just a "place" any more, it is more of a concept, and exists in several places. MAE EAST is operated now by MCI.
I remember seeing it when it was a small room in an underground parking garage. Net techs left their cans of Mountain Dew in the corner.
Today MAE EAST ATM service is avalable in Vienna, Reston, and Ashburn. It has ceased to really be one room, one floor, or even just in one building.
Near the original MAE EAST is also a major AboveNet (now MFN) collocation facility. That is where Geeks in Space: Slashdot Radio used to be served from.
As a current C&W employee..
I have to say there really isn't any suprise to this. While its hard for any business to make a profit off of low-margin web-hosting, C&W was an ill-suited company to try and do so.
During the past ~2 years since it acquired both Digital Island and Exodus, C&W business model has been to lay-off people who knew what they were doing, and promote those who didn't (usually to the VP level).
The whole business is run by a very top-heavy management structure who have no interest whatsoever in doing what is good for the company. Instead upper management have only been concerned with building their own empires, even if duplicate functions existed elsewhere in the company.
There is only so long a company can exist with such an attitude, and C&W has hit the end of the road.
BBN getting sucked up by GTE...
Keep up, will you?
BBN got sucked up by GTE (after briefly instantiating as BBNPlanet); GTEI then got acquired by Bell Atlantic, which then devolved into Verizon and Genuity. Genuity has now been acquired by Level 3.
Next week, Ramirez, long thought dead, will turn up and lay his claim to L3's heart!