>

Our northpoint line here in NYC just went down this weekend. 04 06 01
Bob Lee


Hi All:
>
>Well, out here in California, as soon as Northpoint started shutting down users (upon settling the bankruptcy & selling everything EXCEPT their customers to AT&T -- did you know that little fact?), the California PUC had an emergency meeting the next day which declared they were a public utility and could not shut down without 30-days notice to all customers, and they had to cease turning them off and had to reestablish connections for everyone already shut down. That was on 3/29/2001. My predecessors at my full-time job had used Northpoint with RCN (and it had been working pretty well) as the ISP, but hosting DNS at HostPro -- which makes for some interesting finger pointing and dumbness between all parties. At that time we had not been shut down. With the PUC's order, I thought we would probably still stay on line and need to move to something else soon. Wrong.
>
>Suddenly mid-afternoon on Monday 4/2/2001 we lost our internet connection. Upon checking with RCN, we found it was due to Northpoint and that RCN offered us free dial-up until their pending a bulk transfer of their Northpoint customers to Covad to be done in 2-3 weeks. Problem is: Covad doesn't serve our location, and since we host our own e-mail and web pages we couldn't easily just access their servers for that. So, I scrambled the rest of the day and into the next morning -- looking into ISDN, DSL, T1, satellite, microwave, and cans-with-strings-between-them -- anything I could think of -- and lucked in to Sprint Broadband (microwave), who got a cancellation while I was speaking to them and got a committment for installation on Mon. 4/9/2001 -- pretty good response time. PacBell and all the others I spoke with couldn't do it in less than 4-6 weeks or longer, especially now.
>
>So, hopefully we'll have an emergency connection up in a couple of days, then concentrate on moving to a frame-relay or fractional T1 or full T1 for the long term solution. Fortunately, we don't use our web page for sales directly, but missing e-mail is a major problem for orders and customer service needs. At least by hosting our e-mail inhouse, we can maintain contact between the users on-site -- its just that we have no connection to the outside world...
>
>Not a pretty picture. I hope the PUC stomps on AT&T pretty hard for putting 100,000 customers off line, and not cooperating on this...
>
>Rob
>
>
>
>>I started looking at alts to northpoint at the end of december, knowing that they could go out of business.
>>
>>my dsl isp was charging me for a 1.2line 425.00 from Nothpoint. and now since I ordered a full t1 with a 1.5 speed its costing my company 1000 per month- including the local loop and managed router service.
>>
>>I think I got off easy compaired to some of the horror stories I heard about.
>>
>>A few thoughts or insights I have picked up over the past few months. the DSL is not as important to the telecommuniation industry as a t1 and you cant expect the level of service with any DSl line, that you can from a t1. Something about how the legal issues etc... (I dont know all the facts)
>>
>>t1 service is very competitive these days. At and T will get you a line, complete for 1250 per month, and uunet (if pushed will get you one for the same price)
>>
>>on a less known level you can get t1's with local loop charges for under
>>1000.00
>>
>>
>>Personally I didnt want to risk dsl service for my company, any more so I would not have suggested covad or anything else, to replace my dying northpoint line.
>>
>>Best of luck, and my heart goes out to you.... I know exactally where you are...- I am there with you... My t1 hopefully gets installed this thursday.... I hope I hope I hope.!!
>>
>>Bob Lee