By Christopher Clough
News-Chronicle
People who were subscribers to Waukesha-based Internet service provider @Link (AtLink) got a big surprise when they tried to log on Thursday.
That's when the bankrupt firm was shut down without notice, leaving about 25,000 customers in a five-state area without Internet or e-mail access.
And AtLink's business customers in Green Bay were none too happy about the move. Brown County Publishing, parent company of The Green Bay News-Chronicle, is among those subscribers, as was the Green Bay Area Chamber of Commerce.
AtLink was a digital subscriber line, or DSL, provider, offering high-speed Internet access on phone lines instead of cable.
"We experienced about a day-and-a-half outage," said Mike Vieau, network administrator for former AtLink customer Romo Inc., a De Pere screen printing firm. He and AtLink's other Green Bay area cusotmers said they simply went to connect to the Internet Thursday and nothing happened.
"Their help line said only that they were experiencing an outage, nothing about a bankruptcy," Vieau said. "They came back up for a few days, but then three days later they were gone. We really had no time to move (to another provider)."
"The whole thing is costing a huge amount of money," said Mary Jo Brienen, president of Fundraising Lady Inc. Her company supplies products like candies and fruit and cheese baskets to nonprofit groups for their fund-raising sales.
"It's costing money because the e-mail is down, our Web page is down," Brienen said. "We just had a customer send us a huge proposal by e-mail, and luckily we were able to get it before the e-mail was shut down."
She said it is not just the potential loss of Web business that's costing her. "When it went down the first time, it created all sorts of problems with the server. It had to be reconfigured," Brienen said. "And we have to pay more money to get modems in here for dial-up service."
Vieau said he didn't think Romo had lost any business because of the shutdown, but he said there is still an effect on Romo's business.
"Our Web page is really just informational," he said. "But we were moving proofs to our customers across the e-mail, so we had a one- or two-day turnaround on business.
"Now we have an 'mail box' with another company, but it takes time to send and receive. Now it takes three, four weeks to turn around business. It's been very crippling."
Rob Williams, owner of Robert G. Williams Consulting Inc., a Green Bay-based computer, networking and Internet consulting firm, had 10 area customers on AtLink.
"I had contracts for another six people (to hook up with AtLink)," Williams said. "Those just went out the window."
Williams said the problems began when AtLink's largest customer, an Ohio-headquartered regional business, filed for bankruptcy recently. Because of the loss of its largest contract, AtLink decided to file bankruptcy itself under Chapter 11 and reorganize to provide limited service. But AtLink owed Norlight Communications, which was the provider for most of the services AtLink was offering, a great deal of money in past-due bills, according to Williams.
"Norlight shut them down about two weeks ago," he said. "AtLink took them to court and got a 30-day injunction to keep providing service and give notice to its customers."
In the meantime, AtLink tried to work up a payment plan to Norlight, but the amount owed to Norlight meant that satisfactory terms could not be reached, Williams said. A deal was worked out between the two firms where Norlight took over the company Thursday, shut down AtLink operations and liquidated its equipment to satisfy AtLink's debts.
Messages left on an answering machine at AtLink's corporate headquarters were not returned.
Williams said the fastest possible permanent replacement for AtLink is Choice One Communications, which is negotiating to take over AtLink's phone lines. The roadblock is getting Choice One's equipment into the Ameritech building where the DSL lines are operated, which probably won't happen until May 31 at the earliest.
In the meantime, TDS Metrocom is offering free dial-up Internet and e-mail accounts to former AtLink subscribers on a temporary basis. Williams said some of his clients are taking advantage of this sole option to keep an Internet presence for the moment, including Brienen, himself, and Romo.
Chamber of Commerce president Duanne Swift said the chamber "had the good fortune" to have arranged to switch to TDS before AtLink shut down. "It's only dial-up, but it's better than nothing," Williams said.
FYI
Like many other former AtLink customers, The Green Bay News-Chronicle has arranged temporary dial-up service for e-mail, but access to the single line is somewhat limited. People who usually do business with the newspaper via e-mail are asked to send materials via disk instead, either by dropping them off at 133 S. Monroe Ave. or by mail at P.O. Box 2467, Green Bay, WI 54306, or, in the case of written materials such as press releases or Readers' Comment letters, to send them via fax to 432-8581.
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