Hot Cut Inferno

NorthPoint Communications was hardly the first or only service provider to abruptly discontinue service. But the company's experience is yet another lesson in how broadband services need to be improved if they are going to be truly mass-market.

The industry response to the shutdown of NorthPoint's Digital Subscriber Line network was anything but organized. As a result, the 110,000 customers who got high-speed Internet access from an Internet-service provider that used NorthPoint's DSL network were left to wonder when their service would die, and how they could get DSL back.

At NorthPoint headquarters, there were few answers. The company had provided a blanket letter of authority to its ISP customers that, in theory, would have allowed them to transfer the copper lines once billed to NorthPoint to another competitive local exchange carrier such as Covad Communications, Rhythms Net Connections or New Edge Networks. Customers could also be shifted to DSL services of incumbents or to AT&T's new DSL service.

But changing DSL customers from one provider to another in what the industry calls a "hot swap" or "hot cut" is more complex that it might appear. First, the ISP has to know what equipment is being used to provide the DSL service, since it has to match network equipment with customer equipment in a DSL world that still isn't plug and play.

In addition, many of NorthPoint's customers were businesses using Symmetric DSL, a service that uses the same speeds for uploading and downloading. Incumbent telephone companies only offer Asymmetric DSL, which has a much higher download speed.

DSLi, a Florida ISP that got generally good marks for its efforts to manage the transition of its customers from NorthPoint's network to other CLECs, used an internally developed software program that automated the process of flagging customers who could be most easily transferred to another CLEC, says Eduardo Bustamante, executive vice president of DSLi.

"We have had a lot of experience rescuing customer from failing ISPs, and we developed our own software to automate the process," he says.

If a customer formerly on NorthPoint's network can be easily moved to the network of another CLEC that uses the same brand of DSL gear, that process is done electronically, without going through the incumbent's entire ordering system. That happens with other CLECs have wired the same Central Offices as NorthPoint, using the same equipment, usually DSL gear from Copper Mountain.

Where there is another CLEC present in the serving CO, but that CLEC is using different DSL gear, then DSLi has to send out new customer-premise equipment. In that case, the shift to a new DSL service can take longer, but still happens as part of an automated process, says Bustamante.

For some customers, at least 10 percent, there is no other CLEC provided DSL available, and those customers have more painful choices.

MSN's response was to make a painful choice for all of its customers – the company said it was dropping DSL resale. MegaPath, another ISP, informed customers it was proactively ordering them new DSL lines from other service providers. EV1, a Texas ISP, set up an emergency response team to handle incoming requests as quickly as possible.

Incumbent telephone companies got into the act or were pulled. Verizon, the original villain in this piece when it backed out of its plan to acquire NorthPoint, said it was doing everything possible to keep NorthPoint customers in service, including trying to persuade backbone network providers not to pull the DSL connections, according to spokesman Ells Edwards. By the end of Thursday, March 28, that effort was apparently failing as users up and down the Eastern seaboard that Verizon serves reported losing service.

Edwards said Verizon wasn't opposing "hot cuts" but admitted, "There are a lot of parties involved here and a lot of paperwork."

Texas state regulators pushed Southwestern Bell to commit to a five-day cut-over schedule in meetings held in that state. In California, a number of ISPs and other CLECs were urging regulators to push Pacific Bell to be more proactive in helping migrate NorthPoint customers. Telocity, which had led the ISP effort to get funding for NorthPoint extended long enough to manage the transition of the DSL lines, was a major part of that effort.

Most under fire from former NorthPoint customers was AT&T, which spent $135 million to buy technology assets from NorthPoint a week before the shutdown but was not interested in buying its customer base.

Several California residents posting comments on DSL user groups said they had been pitched by AT&T. "They want more money to sell me less speed," said one disillusioned former NorthPoint customer. "As if!"

Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in The Net Economy.