Focal zooming in to take over NorthPoint's DSL lines
Inside Technology
April 16, 2001

By Jon Van
Tribune staff reporter
The ill wind that blew NorthPoint Communications into bankruptcy, depriving many customers of DSL Internet links, also has been blowing new customers toward Focal Communications Inc.

"We've been taking over many of NorthPoint's lines, and we're scrambling to take over more," said Carl Steen, a Focal marketing executive.

Chicago-based Focal is an alternative phone service company that provides a range of communications services, including DSL, to business and Internet service providers. NorthPoint, on the other hand, had limited itself to being a DSL wholesaler that specialized in providing high-speed digital Internet connectivity over copper phone lines.

"That business model isn't really viable," Steen said. "It's too limited. We're a full-service company that provides dial tone and develops extensive customer relationships. DSL is just one feature for us, not the whole thing."

NorthPoint, along with RhythmsNetConnections and Covad Communications, two other DSL wholesalers, attracted a lot of talent and buckets of capital a few years ago when investors were throwing money at anything connected to the Internet.

When the money spigot shut down and investors began demanding profits, NorthPoint found itself short of operating cash, and observers fear that Rhythms and Covad could follow NorthPoint down the slippery slope.

Many DSL users were chagrined to lose their high-speed data connections when NorthPoint went under, but the firm did what it could to help the transition by providing their Internet service provider customers with documentation of the specific lines NorthPoint has leased from companies like Ameritech.

With that information in hand, an ISP that comes to Focal seeking DSL service may save a lot of time. The incumbent local carriers like Ameritech that own the lines carrying DSL have set those lines aside for 30 days to make the transition, Steen said. "We're really hustling to takeover the NorthPoint lines before the 30 days is up."

Of course Focal is just one of many enterprises leaping into the breach caused by NorthPoint's failure. The Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce established a hotline, 888-215-0058, intended to help find new service for businesses that lost their DSL connections.