Cogent Involved In Another Peering Dispute – CEO: You're just jealous…

In: broadbandreports.com|Site Feeds|VoIP

18 Mar 2008

Cogent is no stranger to peering disputes, fighting with Level3 back in 2005 and AOL back in 2002. While most peering arrangements involve carriers trading equal amounts of bandwidth, Cogent’s discount Mc-bandwidth approach (100 Mbps for $1,000 per month) often involves a sharing imbalance, which results in one side or the other feeling slighted. The fights are usually resolved in time, but they’re never much fun for the users impacted. Cogent’s latest fight is with Swedish telecom operator Telia, and the two stopped interconnecting last week.

This fight is impacting many broadband customers across a large chunk of Europe. Cogent, as usual, is taking a public relations beating for the dispute, but the company’s CEO is claiming that the peering fight this time is about “jealousy”:

“The problem is simple, no one likes our low-price pricing policy except our customers, and most of the companies have been reluctant peers with us,” says Schaffer, who has guided the company through some tough times. Indeed, its Wal-Mart style approach to bandwidth has helped the company grow its revenues, but not its standing in the ISP business. “They hate our pricing.”

ISP Planet makes the point that unlike other signed and sealed business deals, peering arrangements often rest on a handshake and a wink, something that may ultimately result in far more serious problems down the road (likely involving Cogent).
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