Bill Cunningham wrote:
Dear Loyd Wood,
That E-bone collapse you spoke of a few days ago, at Worldcom. Vinton
Cerf said there was a backup in place there at KPN. I'm not quite sure what
KPN is but I guess it's Worldcom Europe.
No - KPN is not Worldcom.
There's plenty of excess capacity - both lit and unlit fiber - in
Europe, North America, and Asia.
KPN is the incumbent telco in the Netherlands, and part owner of the JV
KPN/Quest, who operated ebone.
From Telephony:
WORLDCOM COMPETITORS READY TO INHERIT GLOBAL DATA MARKET
Tim McElligott
Telephony, Jul 8, 2002
WorldCom CEO John Sidgmore's assertion last week that the U.S. has a
vested interest in keeping the company afloat because it handles so much
Internet traffic sounded to some analysts like a veiled threat to a
country undeniably hooked on the Web. However, neither the U.S. nor
WorldCom has a monopoly on the Internet, and plenty of carriers across
the pond are capable of handling all that traffic.
Carriers such as BT Ignite, Cable & Wireless, Equant and Telia, some of
which have already seen an increase in business from the collapse of
KPNQwest, are positioned across Europe to take advantage of the
situation.
?What is happening to WorldCom is not good news for business in general,
and confidence for investors has become a big issue,? said Daniel
Caclin, chief operating officer at Equant.
<snip>
The double hit has forced business customers to start asking new
questions. ?Customers are now asking us if the fiber on [long-haul
routes] is really ours, if it is our right of way. They never asked that
before,? said Thomas Zedendahl, business information director at Telia.
Because most foreign carriers use some of WorldCom's facilities to
connect with the U.S., the company's rumored bankruptcy has sent them
scrambling for diversity to ease the concerns of their customers.
Carriers also are beginning to rethink their own strategies. ?For years
the U.S. has been held up as the best way to run a competitive
capitalist economy,? Hewett said. ?I think there are some aspects of
that that are being questioned by Europeans now.?
-----------------------------------
Other operators are scaling back - Fibernet for example, who had
recently completed roll out of network (leased and owned) in France and
Germany.
Interoute is promoting heavily that they are safe, backed by the Sandoz
Foundation.
--
Dominic Pinto
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