Connectivity between Sprint-Nextel and Cogent restored
Sprint-Nextel announced on Sunday that “they initiated a temporary reconnection to the Cogent network while longer term alternate and permanent access options are explored.”
The detailed statement from Sprint provides the long awaited point of view from their side of things. The facts (as seen by Sprint) include a one to one comparison of the statements made by Cogent and how Sprint sees things:
- On october 30th, they indeed disconnected the final two interconnects, but this was only the last step of disconnecting all of the originally existing 10 interconnects. The started the process of disconnecting those 10 circuits on October 7th, so it was hardly a surprise for Cogent.
- Sprint confirms yet again that both parties entered a trial peering agreement in September 2006, which ended in September 2007.
- Sprint filed a lawsuit on September 2nd against Cogent for breach of contract due to Cogent refusal to pay Sprint for the ongoing connection to the Sprint network. Sprint also provided Cogent with a 30 days advance notice of the disconnection.
It will be interesting to see what the final outcome of this will be, since as mentioned above, the reconnection is only temporary.