Writing Samples

The mysterious Arvotek disappearance

They came to us homeless. Huddled masses, confused and wide eyed, some with computers under their arms and all of them with the same question: "What happened to my Internet service provider?"

For those of you who don't know, I work at InterNet Kingston which is a small, locally-owned Internet service provider located in, you guessed it, Kingston, Ontario. We are used to people switching around from provider to provider but the onslaught of new customers that we have received in the last few weeks has been uncharacteristic. It all stemmed from a highly-unlikely event, the virtual disappearance of one of our competitors, the Toronto-owned Arvotek (formerly Arac-net).

It all started on March 30, 2000, when we became aware of rumours that Arvotek's T-1 was down. (T-1 lines are a popular leased-line option for businesses connecting to the Internet and for Internet service providers connecting to the Internet backbone. The Internet backbone, itself, consists of faster T-3 connections.) Brief outages happen with any Internet service provider, so we weren't overly shocked about it. With the redundancy that is commonly built into an ISP's network, this can mean slower service for customers and, at worst, a brief interruption in service.

However, by Friday, March 31, the King Street offices of Arvotek Internet systems were locked and seemed to be empty.

All that weekend, folks calling there were met with an apologetic voice mail message explaining that the company's T-1 was down and that 'the problem would be cleared up as soon as possible'.

It was about this time that it became apparent to us that something was awry as Arvotek's displaced customers began pouring in, asking whether we knew what was happening.

On Wednesday, April 5, 2000, Arvotek posted a notice at their Web site reporting problems that they were experiencing with some of their phone lines. The notice went on to say that, 'Specifically, any data number that begins with 599 is no longer functional. In addition we are also having problems with our office telephone numbers for sales and support'. The notice then went on to list various area code 416 numbers that could be used instead of these data numbers.

While this particular posting did not address the oddities that were being experienced in Kingston directly, they did foreshadow something that was reported the next day.

That Thursday, The Kingston Whig Standard ran an article that began to reveal what had happened to Arvotek. Staff writer Frank Armstrong had done some very meaningful digging and managed to speak to someone at Bell Canada. While the Bell Canada representative was unable to comment on confidential customer information, she was able to confirm that they had no record of either an 'Arvotek' or an 'Aracnet' on file.

According to a post dated April 12, 2000, on Arvotek's online newsletter, they had, 'struck an agreement with Echo OnLine Internet Inc. to transfer all networking services to Echo OnLine'. Echo OnLine (Toronto) is honouring all the accounts of customers who hung in there while their system was being moved over to Echo. While Echo seemed to be picking up where Arvotek had left off, there didn't appear to be any official position on the status of dial-up access for Kingston - at least not as of press time.

While any local Internet service provider welcomes new business, my employer is certainly not rejoicing over the recent misfortunes of our former competitor. Sadly, we have found that, anytime a competing supplier of Internet access runs into trouble or experiences significant interruptions of service, it hurts the reputation of the entire industry. Every day since Arvotek closed its doors, we have fielded questions about whether we're planning to be around for the foreseeable future.

In such an atmosphere, ISPs have to work that much harder to provide a quality of service that helps new customers put their previous unpleasant experiences behind them. M

Links

Whig Standard article http://www.thewhig.com/news/000407/3890306.html

Arvotek news posts http://www.arvotek.com/newsletter.html