Sprint Cuts Service to Cogent

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 2006, 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.

Daniel R. Hesse

President and Chief Executive Officer

Sprint Nextel

Sprint Corporate Headquarters

6200 Sprint Parkway

Overland Park, Kansas 66251

James H. Hance, Jr.

Chairman of the Board

Sprint Nextel

Sprint Corporate Headquarters

6200 Sprint Parkway

Overland Park, Kansas 66251

Rodney O'Neal

Chief Executive Officer and President

Delphi Corporation

World and North American Headquarters

5725 Delphi Drive

Troy, Michigan 48098-2815

William R. Nuti

Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer and President

NCR World Headquarters

1700 S. Patterson Blvd

Dayton, Ohio 45479

Irvine O. Hockaday, Jr.

Board of Directors

Sprint Corporate Headquarters

6200 Sprint Parkway

Overland Park, Kansas 66251

V. Janet Hill

Vice President

Alexander and Associates

400 C St. NE

Washington, DC 20002

Larry C. Glasscock

Chairman of the Board

WellPoint, Inc.

120 Monument Circle

Indianapolis, IN 46204

Gordon M. Bethune

Board of Directors

Sprint Corporate Headquarters

6200 Sprint Parkway

Overland Park, Kansas 66251

Robert R. Bennett

Board of Directors

Sprint Corporate Headquarters

6200 Sprint Parkway

Overland Park, Kansas 66251

Comment On This

I agree. Sprint is very sick, very bad.

I have spoke one of Sprint's supervisor her name is Dobie, Her ID is DO 617325. She is one of the worst supervisor I have ever dealt with in the Wireless industry. My story is as follow:

I have two data card with Sprint. We are very careful for the 5G limitation on the card. But there still a over usage on one of my card.

I call the customer care, the account management and the cancellation department. It take me 2-3 hours each time try to remove the over usage charge, but all Sprint want to do is to transfer me from one place to another; from one supervisor to another supervisor. Nobody on Sprint have the right to remove any of these unfair over usage charges.

The customer service professional from Sprint is careless. They do not care if they loose you as their customer. Sprint customer service level is far far away from Verizon and AT&T. Do not deal with Sprint if possible. They are too bad.