I seem to recall something about Broadwing being acquired by InterNAP (or perhaps it was just some of their assets). When I was at 250 Williams, ATL some InterNAP staff were there removing Broadwing logos from cabinets
We've had good luck with AboveNet. They have been very responsive when there was a routing problem or with any issue. They don't peer with Level 3 in Dallas, but hopefully they soon will. They are very easy to work with and I haven't had any complaints about their bandwidth..
There are some big DC's / dedicated server providers that use a lot of Abovenet transit in their BGP mix and seem to get pretty good performance with it. Never used it myself, so I can't comment.
Broadwing, on the other hand.... well, lets just say i've heard them nicknamed "Brokenwing", and i've never seen anything from them to dispute the nickname.
We've been with Above.Net for two years. We have a GigE with them now. I have absolutely nothing bad to say about their network, other than the fact that Internap and Savvis are both faster coast to coast, but AboveNet does really well in our BGP matrix.
However, support tickets take forever to be answered, and although their technical staff is professional and readily available if you have an emergency, their billing and sales staff are the worst I have ever dealt with, and we have currently, or have in the past, dealt with almost all the Tier-1 and Tier-2 carriers...the worst. We get overcharged for bandwidth, credits take forever to be issued, and the sales staff is worse than a stereotypical used car salesman, even though they have no actual pricing control, all they can do is read from the line sheet.
I just picked up a GigE with Broadwing. So far sales and managment have been quite professional, it's a backup circuit so latency isn't an issue for us, but it's not lit yet for us to test it.
Broadwing is now owned by Corvis. Since that purchase, Broadwing arm of the business bought Focal communications, based in Chicago.
While back Broadwing was ok with longhaul prices and such, but their IP offerings were never anything too special (price or service wise). Seems like they are still sorting out what they wanna do or be when they grow up.
AboveNet is much the same. Not sure what they're end game is gonna be (quality leader, price leader, something...) but looks like they are just weathering the tide.
AboveNet is a little strange right now.. on the one hand they are upgrading their IP network, and on the other they are indicating that they are not interested in selling IP bandwidth in data centers, they want to sell it in conjunction with fiber or circuits.
I think Abovenet is in a cash crunch right now, their costs to run their network are high and they are having trouble selling in the cheap world of wholesale bandwidth...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dennis Nugent
AboveNet is a little strange right now.. on the one hand they are upgrading their IP network, and on the other they are indicating that they are not interested in selling IP bandwidth in data centers, they want to sell it in conjunction with fiber or circuits.