From: Mehmet Akcin
Date: 5/6/19 09:02 (GMT-05:00)
To: Theo Voss
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: Fibre provider in Starkville, MS"hi Theo,
Looks like Earthlink (now Windstream) has fiber there. You can visit www.infrapedia.com to look at what is available.
"
Hasn’t windstream filed for Chapter 11/13 protection? Not certain that’s the best choice.
LQ Marshall
Marshall, the whole Windstream Chapter 11 may sound concerning but my understanding (not a legal expert here) Chapter 11 gives greater protection to customers and given critical services Windstream offers nationwide, I would have absolutely zero concern about this.
Mehmet
I just took a wholesale circuit from Windstream, it was fine - the provisioning/delivery portion was within the Chapter 11 timeline. The Chapter 11 thing, if you read about it, isn’t really because they are going bankrupt, it’s more to protect them from a pending lawsuit from a hedge fund (Aurelius Capital) “if” the hedge fund wins in court. The hedge fun did initially win, but Windstream is appealing, if they lose the appeal, the Chapter 11 protection will prevent the hedge fund from gutting Windstream dry, which they would happily do!
It all has to do with the fact that the hedge fund was unhappy that Windstream spin-off assets into Uniti Fiber, i.e. rich people upset about not making “enough” money from a deal.
-John
Yeah, I wouldn’t worry about the services themselves. This is all legal maneuvering due to the financial engineering that was being done.
They won’t be going dark or anything. Absolutely worst case they may have to sell some markets off to another carrier, but IF that gets there it’s many years away anyways.
Once upon a time, Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> said:
They won't be going dark or anything. Absolutely worst case they may have
to sell some markets off to another carrier, but IF that gets there it's
many years away anyways.
Well, the worst practical case is that they lay off (or otherwise lose)
competent service employees, leaving you stuck when there's an outage.
We have "legacy" circuits with Windstream (originally ordered from
Deltacom, who was bought by Earthlink, who was bought by Windstream),
and the support on those is pretty poor.
Completely correct of course. I guess in my mind that’s just completely normal in this industry; Carrier A bought by Carrier B, eventually all services supported by Carrier B, and employees from both worlds have to work on systems and equipment they are unfamiliar with. ( Tough to integrate properly when some hedgy is riding you over that extra 0.45%! ) Support on ‘legacy’ always tends to suffer.
“
Well, the worst practical case is that they lay off (or otherwise lose)
competent service employees, leaving you stuck when there’s an outage.
We have “legacy” circuits with Windstream (originally ordered from
Deltacom, who was bought by Earthlink, who was bought by Windstream),
and the support on those is pretty poor.
”
My comment was from current experience … have a legacy PRI that was disco’d ~18 months ago. Initially told they cannot access the disco order that old. This morning that order is referencing something else(!?). Our monthly bill was not insignificant, but in a month it will be zero. I’m transferring remaining services to reliable carriers.
I don’t have this kind of time to waste in my day if I had any other choice I’d exercise it.
LQ Marshall