By David Hamilton, theWHIR.com
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October 31, 2008 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Amidst litigation hearings, a heated dispute between carriers Cogent (www.cogentco.com) and Sprint-Nextel (www.sprint.com) boiled over this week when Sprint-Nextel severed its Internet connection to Cogent Thursday afternoon.
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“We are progressing through the court system, Sprint took the unilateral action of severing the connection before a final court ruling,” Cogent chief executive officer David Schaeffer said.
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“The two companies have had for a number of years a settlement-free peering agreement that agreement basically requires a certain number of connections, a certain balance of traffic, and a certain utilization of the connections,” Schaeffer said. He explained that both companies were in compliance until a little more than a year ago when Sprint notified Cogent they were going to unilaterally change the method in which they measured utilization, switching from the industry-standard 95th percentile to average.
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“[It] was in direct violation with the agreement, which called for 95th percentile testing,” Schaeffer said. “We protested…We told them that was a violation of the agreement – they then subsequently said that (based on that measure) they were going to send us a bill even thought we had no contract for a billed service.”
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While Cogent argues that Sprint-Nextel is in violation contractual obligations, Sprint-Nextel said that there was never a contract in the beginning and they have the right to cut off service regardless of the Northern Virginia District Court’s ruling, where Cogent is suing Sprint-Nextel, and Sprint-Nextel is suing Cogent.
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“They reference a peering agreement with Sprint and that’s really a distortion because we’ve never had a peering agreement with Cogent,” said Sprint-Nextel spokesperson Matthew Sullivan.
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“In 2006, we entered into a commercial trial agreement and then based on that trial – there were utilization requirements that each side had to meet and these were laid out very specifically in the contract – Cogent failed to satisfy those terms,” said Sullivan. “As a result, as part of the terms of the contract, Cogent had the option to pay us to remain connected or they could disconnect. And they have refused to pay us and they have also refused to disconnect from our network.”
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Sprint-Nextel subsequently engaged in legal action and cut off Cogent from its network. Sullivan, however, predicts that the implications for Cogent customers will be marginal, seeing as Cogent is networked with most other carriers, leaving few areas of theInternet inaccessible.
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“About one half of one percent of our traffic is exchanged with Sprint – we’re connected to a number of other providers as well. It has a relatively small impact on Cogent. I believe the impact has been much larger on Sprint as we are a larger carrier of traffic than Sprint.”
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