Cogent Says It's Readying for Legal Fight Over ISP Interconnection Problems
Cogent is beefing up legal spending as it prepares to go to court over ISP interconnection problems, CEO David Schaeffer said Thursday in a conference call on earnings results. Despite "active discussions ... we believe there's at least a couple…
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[parties] that it appears possible that we may have to file litigation" on, Schaeffer said. "Hopefully ... they may understand the strength of our argument and come to the table. While we continue to remain hopeful that we will not have to file any litigation, we have prepared briefs and motions for litigation against several parties that have been unwilling to upgrade their interconnection capacity as required under the open Internet order." The "three problematic ISPs" are CenturyLink, Deutsche Telekom and Time Warner Cable, he said. While as much as 18 percent of Cogent's traffic at one time suffered interconnection problems with a variety of ISPs -- particularly AT&T, Comcast and Verizon -- "the largest three ISPs in the U.S. have understood this, understood their obligation under the law and have been good corporate citizens and opened up interconnections," Schaeffer said. Today, about 8 percent of Cogent's aggregate traffic is with providers experiencing congestion, he said. He has griped before about the likes of CenturyLink and TWC (see 1505010033). Those companies had no comment right away Thursday.