OT: Internet Provider

[Leif Gregory]

On Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:41:21 -0700
"Karl F. Larsen" <klarsen1 at gmail.com> wrote:

>     I just returned from the building that holds Zianet now in Las 
> Cruces, NM. I entered the inner works and learned that Zianet and One 
> Connect and SkiWi are now merged into one company called Zianet. They
> go to court next Tuesday trying to win a reduction in the cost of
> bytes for dollars.

Ok, might as well chime in so you've got the whole story. My wife and I
have been dealing with Jack Leech, president of SkyWi / OneConnect
directly since this started. My wife's office was a customer of
SkyWi VoIP services and was down for two weeks.

At any rate, OneConnect absorbed ZiaNet, then later merged with SkyWi
and are operating under the SkyWi banner. However, they're all still
offering services under their previous names. When OneConnect merged
with SkyWi, they were unaware that SkyWi was litigating against Qwest.
SkyWi had an injunction in place to prevent Qwest from disconnecting
services while fees were being disputed. Prior to Qwest terminating
service, disputed fees were in the hundreds of thousands of dollars
that Qwest was owed. The dispute was over SkyWi saying Qwest was
charging too much, anti-trust violations, racketeering etc. They stated
Qwest was in violation of RICO statutes and the Clayton Act.

On Dec 30th, the day after the injunction expired, Qwest terminated
service. A PRC hearing was scheduled immediately and Qwest was ordered
to restore service. Qwest froze more than 1.5M of pending sales and made
statements to the public that SkyWi was going out of business.

It wasn't until the 6th of Jan that VoIP service was restored to my
wife's office (technically her whole floor).

So, SkyWi owed Qwest (based on what I would assume to have been a
negotiated fee agreement) hundreds of thousands. SkyWi disputed the
fees and received an injuction to prevent termination of service.
SkyWi and Qwest both knew the injuction was set to expire. NEITHER of
them notified customers who would be impacted.

Qwest did what it set out to do, which was seriously undermine trust
in SkyWi and OneConnect. Customers are leaving in droves. We blame
both of them. Heck, nearly the entire city of Taos was affected to
include police, hospitals, etc.

Most of the people on my wife's floor had cellular service with Qwest.
Not anymore. I've helped most of them dump Qwest and go with other
cellular providers and the building manager is moving to another ISP
and VoIP provider. The core problem still remains though. These
smaller ISPs are riding on Qwest infrastructure.

At any rate, stay tuned. As an attorney, my wife is working with some
other attorneys to proceed with a class action lawsuit.