isp leaves thousands in the lurch

Happens time and time again small players for one reason or another get themselves into trouble, which is exactly why corporates will stick with Telstra as will most individuals....saving a few dollars is just not worth the pain and especially business will pay a premuim for security and certainty.

The same arguements as banks, people whinge and whinge about them but keep using them because they want the security, they can't be stuffed moving around, better the devil you know and they dont understand all the different offerings anyway....so the majority stay where they are.


ISP leaves thousands in the lurch
Louisa Hearn
September 22, 2006 - 5:08PM

The online future of an estimated 30,000 Australian customers of an internet service provider called Veridas looked increasingly uncertain on Friday as they were left without a service for the third day running.

The company, which has its own broadband customers and also acts a wholesaler to other ISPs, has given no official explanation for the outage, which is believed to have been caused by a bitter management rift that looks unlikely to be resolved.

One internet reseller left in the lurch by Veridas is AuNix Internet, which was today running an automated voicemail response to support calls, advising users that its wholesaler Veridas was "no longer able to provide an internet service." The message said AuNix had begun to migrate all of its customers to a new wholesaler and would contact them today to provide a back up solution.

"Please be patient. It is difficult to answer phones as there are many incoming calls and we hope to speak to you as soon as possible," the message said.
John Lefel, a 78-year-old man from Narooma, NSW said he had been unable to get through to his own reseller, Aztec, ever since his internet connection failed on Wednesday.

Mr Lefel, who lives out of town and is unable to drive, describes himself as "very reliant" on the internet, spending most of his day online shopping, banking and communicating with friends.

He said he had approached BigPond in an attempt to transfer his service, but was told he would have to call his current supplier (which has not answered any of his calls) to release his ADSL modem. Mr Lefel has already prepaid $45 for next month's service and put down a $100 security deposit on his service 12 months ago.
"You come to depend on them, but when they are gone you just can't go anywhere," he said.
Veridas's website remained inaccessible on Friday, however posts made under the name of John Russell, its chief executive, appeared on the Whirlpool forum today, alleging that he and other technical staff had been locked out of the Veridas system by other staff, which had caused the entire shutdown of the network.

Although he provides no explanation for why that action was launched, a news item on Whirlpool said some of the conflict could have been set off by a large outstanding debt to Telstra.

While Telstra would not confirm whether Veridas was one of their customers, and whether any large sums of money were owing, a company spokeswoman said: "If their service has been switched off it has nothing to do with Telstra".

Mr Russell's most recent Whirlpool post asserts that he has received two seperate bids to buy the company; one from Eftel, and the other from Wild Internet, although he did not disclose whether he was in a position to accept either of them.