Sprint-Nextel Severs It's Internet Connection To Cogent Communications

WASHINGTON, D.C. October 30, 2008

On October 30 at 4:30 pm Sprint-Nextel severed its Internet connection to Cogent thereby partitioning the Internet. It is no longer possible for many Sprint customers and Cogent customers to directly communicate across the Internet.

Sprint did so in violation of a contractual obligation to exchange Internet traffic with Cogent on a settlement free peering basis. Sprint and Cogent are engaged in litigation over this matter. Cogent regrets that Sprint chose to take this unilateral action rather than await a determination by the court as to the rights of the parties. Cogent remains ready to reestablish, on the same settlement free basis as previously existed, the connections that Sprint has severed. In the over 1300 on-net locations worldwide where Cogent provides service, Cogent is offering every Sprint-Nextel wireline customer that is unable to connect to Cogent’s customers a free 100 megabit per second connection to the Internet for as long as Sprint continues to keep this partitioning of the Internet in place. Unfortunately, there is no way that Cogent can do the same for the wireless customers of Sprint-Nextel. All other major wireless carriers have full connectivity to Cogent and are unaffected by this event.