Due to a contract dispute, Sprint has disconnected its network from Cogent's network. Cogent is a multinational Tier 1 Internet service provider and several web hosts use them to provide bandwidth to their customers. As a result of Sprint's decision to terminate Cogent, I cannot use my Sprint broadband card to access the websites that I maintain because my web host uses Cogent's services nor can I access the email that's being sent via any of those domain addresses. Essentially, I cannot provide the services to my clients unless I pay to use another Internet service provider for access.
I contacted Sprint's customer service and spoke to a representative who knew nothing about the dispute with Cogent. He transferred me to a technical support rep who was also in the dark about the problem. Finally, I asked to be transferred to contractual services.
The contracts representative was also unaware of the dispute between Sprint and Cogent and he became very antagonistic when I told him that he was "ignorant of this matter"; he also told me that as long as I could access any part of the Internet using my broadband card then Sprint was not in breach of their contract and I would be charged an early termination fee of $150 if I chose to cancel my contract. I asked to speak to a manager. After placing my call on hold for an inordinately long period of time, the surly rep returned to the phone and told me that my complaint had been escalated, gave me a "claim number" and informed me that I would be contacted within 24 to 48 hours.
Approximately two hours later, I received a call from a Sprint contracts manager. The manager was again completely ignorant of the contract dispute and the resulting decision to terminate service and, after a search, she told me that she was unable to find ANY information about the problem in any of the Sprint databases that she accessed!
I read the following statement to her:
"In Sprint and Cogent entered into a commercial trial agreement. Cogent failed to satisfy Sprint's peering criteria and refused to pay Sprint to stay connected to our network. Sprint notified Cogent well in advance that it would disconnect Cogent unless it paid, and Cogent refused. As a result of Cogent's refusal, Sprint was forced to terminate the commercial interconnection agreement and disconnect its network from Cogent's. Cogent's posturing is nothing more than an effort to divert attention away from its' contractual obligations, and this is the latest in a growing list of peering-related disputes between Cogent and Internet backbone providers." (Source: http://tech. Slashdot.org/comments. Pl? Sid=1013843&cid=25585957) After which, she informed me that Sprint's customer service reps probably were not informed of nor would have they been allowed to comment on the situation since it involved ongoing litigation. Effectively, it appears that Sprint would choose to keep its own reps in the dark thereby denying them the tools to respond to complaints from customers in my situation.
I told her, in no uncertain terms, that I thought it was a horrible business practice to punish your own customers in an attempt to force another company to bend to your will. Luckily, the manager was sympathetic to my plight. While continuing to claim that Sprint had not done anything that could be considered a violation of our contract, she agreed to waive the early termination fee if I chose to cancel my account.
I have opted to give Sprint, Cogent and my webhost a week, in the undoubtedly vain hope that they will come to some kind of resolution. Meanwhile, I am searching for a new mobile broadband provider and drafting a letter to Sprint's board of directors.
BTW, I would love to contact Cogent and complain to them; however, as a Sprint broadband customer, I cannot access their website. As someone on the O'Reilly factor website said, imagine Cogent was AT&T and Sprint has to stop routing their customer's calls to/from customer's of that carrier.
FYI: Sprint's Directors. I could only find non-Sprint corporate addresses for four of them, so I'll send the other five letters to Sprint Headquarters.
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