This is only marginally on topic, but I know Ted Byfield (quoted as a Thing.net board member in the NYT) from elsewhere so I forwarded Adam's post to him for comment. Followups to nanog-offtopic please, I won't continue the thread here. Ted's reply is below. -- Joseph F. Noonan Rigaku/MSC Inc. jfn@msc.com ----- Forwarded //Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2003 10:43:44 -0500 //From: t byfield <tbyfield@panix.com> //To: nanog@merit.edu //Subject: Re: NYT on Thing.net (fwd) hi, nanogers -- adam, yeah, as a matter of fact, you are off-base. for starters, you seem to assume that getting alternate connectivity and talking with journalists (or 'complaining to the media,' as you so generously put it) are mutually exclusive. they aren't, of course. and, once upon a time, 601 w 26th may have been split evenly between carriers and offices, but that's hardly the case now: there are rooms half the size of a football field littered with racks and channel ditched by carriers that went bust. they were banging on thing.net's door with all kinds of kewl offers; luckily, thing.net said no. there are a lot of issues bearing on how thing.net is handling this issue which i'm not at liberty to speak about in public. suffice it to say that the people who run thing.net aren't stupid or thoughtless, so chances are that cursory readings of newspaper articles probably aren't the best basis for estimating what thing.net is or isn't doing or why. cheers, t - (on thing.net's board)
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2003 14:01:38 -0500 From: Adam Rothschild <asr@asr.org> To: batz <batsy@vapour.net> Subject: Re: NYT on Thing.net <...> thing.net is located at 601 West 26th Street in New York City, a building split about evenly between carrier facilities and commercial office space.
Around the time their squabbles with Verio took place, they were approached by building neighbors aware of their struggles, offering backup connectivity on favorable terms.
In reading this and other articles, it seems to me they're more interested in complaining to the media about so-called impiety on Verio's part, than acquiring alternate connectivity and retaining their subscriber base.
Of course, I could be off-base, in which case I encourage others privy to more details of the situation to speak up.
Regards, -a
----- Backwarded