IP Communications in Trouble?

J.Y: I'm not going to be specific since this is a public forum, but you do NOT have the facts straight. Things were changed once you were laid off. PLEASE stop spreading rumours.

I have to agree with the bad business decision part. When I was working at Texas.net IP promised some great DSL provisioning as well assuring us they would not compete with us. Well the provisioning was faster than SBC alright, but the next thing you know IP is offering DSL and T1 services in the same area. Maybe I'm missing something but they outright lied to us. CEO was mad he stopped doing business with IP altogether. I'm sure there were other ISP's who felt the same way if they were given the same song and dance.

Sales number mind you. Not to say they won't say the truth, but often times corporate tells their employees something different than what's really going on. What you know might not be the exact truth. Think about it. If you had a company that was about to do something that would look bad would you tell your sales force? I'm talking from experience.

I didn't actually say "Sean Minter was the reason that IPC failed." It was a combination of a lot of bad decisions, yes. Without him, the company would have been gone before Rhythms would have -- and before Northpoint. He made many good decisions in there. The problem with the company being in the situation it is in right now is partially Lucent. I do believe, however, that the LECs have a competitive advantage over their customers too and that was the reason for all of the failures out there. Too much competition. IPC left themselves in a market with pretty much 2 competitors in every CO -- Covad and SWB, simply because every other company was wasting money left and right. IPC simply got in to debt, realized it, and then tried to recover. If they can maintain the number of employees that they have now for 2 weeks, and even let go of more, I still believe the people they will be capable of keeping the network running with the current amount of customers. As far as adding, it really can't be said. All that is needed in a single tech per region since there really aren't any equipment upgrades now at this point.

Also, just to clarify it, the Stinger DSLAM is capable of running IMA on the trunk.

The single biggest problem with IP is that one time I had 5 bosses sitting with in 20 feet of me. Any one seen office space? Yep, it was kinda like that.

I dunno Sean Mentor personally, and I doubt he knows me even though I worked for him for a year and a half. *My Opinion* Seems to me the company was set up to sell quickly so Sean could get on to this next big thing. I could be wrong though

I hope he and Steve can pull it out for the employee's still left.

your just mad that a certain ex-VP wasn't hanging his shizzels doing the porn stance at your desk. IP people knows what i'm talkin about. not pretty.

I still haven't seen a company that had cubicles that wasn't like Office Space. Hell, I came to work every day wearing what I wanted, and did what I wanted. Fact of the matter is that I got more work done that way than if I had followed the exact rules.

If the folks at Texas.net were not smart enough to get a noncompetition pact signed with IP when partnering with them, then they have nothing to cry about.
Verbal agreements are worthless. Promises without signatures on paper are also worthless.
Good business relationships require sound (and smart) decisions between all concerned.

We do. I have been through this wringer myself, with a few companies. Rhythms was the most recent.
NDAs have more to do with not disclosing details of the business from a technical standpoint, though, more than anything else.
They do little to elaborate on what may happen if someone is justing talking general, unspecific trash about them.
However, I did point out in an earlier post that one should watch what he says, especially if it's just hearsay, because implications abound.

And there's a little bit of cleanliness to the "future of IPC." Cleaned up exact numbers and stuff...

Or in IP's case.. TBS reports...

This is all so much BS. The person who called DSLReports a "portal" shows how ignorant the people at IP Communications were regarding the net. OK since those of you with the veiled legal threats don't seem to be aware of how the technology actually works, let's take a look.

I am an anonymous poster, my identity is unknown to DSLReports. I live in Texas but I am posting from a generic dialup IP number in Illinois through a free ISP account I got with a made up name and address.

Now I could sit here and make up any kind of BS I wanted and there is not a damn thing anyone can do to identify me. So your threats are meaningless.

This shows a big part of the problem at IP Communications. A complete and total lack of understanding of how the internet works and the internet business in general was prevalent among all the executives, none of which had ever been in an internet business before. They're all old telco hacks, and don't know jack beans about the net. Instead of knowledge and skill they prefer to operate on hazy and meaningless threats to control people.

Why don't you tell us how you are going to identify posters you don't like? All you have is an IP number assigned to a generic dialup pool that is used by a free ISP. Go ahead, tell us how you will use that to identify me so I can be punished for my opinions on IP Communications. I can't wait to hear it.

> to say that the company was not a success just because it's teetering now is short-sighted and ignorant of its accomplishments

Accomplishments? Like what? They did nothing but lose money the entire time they were in business. Sean has wasted and lost HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of his investor's money. That is what he has done for the people who trusted him with their funds.

Where is the accomplishment in that? The objective of business is to make profit and gain a return for investors. If you haven't done that, then in business you have accomplished nothing. IP Communications has accomplished nothing.

Please try and not judge an entire company by how someone refers to dslreports on a public anonymous forum. Yes you have dialup this and generic that. You are 1337er than us, here's your certificate.

Do you have any clue what fully funded means you moron? They weren't making their numbers. A company is fully funded based on making the numbers in the business plan the funding is based upon. If you miss one month in a recurring revenue business, you are no longer fully funded. Stick to customer support, idiot.

You seem to pretty hung up on how the investors were "cheated" by Sean- it would be most interesting to know your (former?) affiliation with IPC. Or was it Sean Minter? Are you an investor? An early layoffee? Or perhaps someone from ALT or MCI?

Rantou is god......Inside Joke. You made good points, and all of them were valid. We know the real deal Rantou.

kcharg

Tell Ashcroft and the Department of Justice that they can't find you.
I assure you that they could if the mood struck them, given the current state of affairs.
Also, whether or not you faked a name to get an email address is irrelevant. A good tracker could still find you, or at the very least, the computer you wrote your post from.
Anyway, I personally am not affiliated with IP Communication in any way. Not as an employee, ex-employee, board member, or even a stockholder.
What I am however is someone who can identify crap when he smells it.
All I said before is that if you are going to make a claim, be prepared to back it up with evidence. Anything else is hearsay and slander.
If you choose to take another route, be my guest. I won't get in any trouble.

Just my 2 cents... I feel that all of these data CLECs started off with a pretty poor business plan including IPC. And what were these investors thinking? DSL is an upgraded internet access service. Kind of like call waiting or call forwarding is an upgrade to normal voice service. These companies were built and funded on an upgradable service which is much harder to sell by itself.
Of course, as a former employee of IPC, I realized this much too late. IPC did do more than just a DSL product, but not much more.
The company blew through hundreds of millions of investor's dollars not soley to blame on Sean Minter. Sure, he was the President and could've/should've put a stop to it, and he was the one meeting with the board telling them God knows what, but there were numerous VPs to blame as well. The business decisions he made were definately questioned by many and still are. I left many a meeting shaking my head in disagreement. I was also financialy wronged on payroll as were other people. (Ya, I can prove it on paper.)
All and all, it doesn't matter any more if I liked who I worked for, thought he was a complete moron or if I was stolen from. I'm just glad there are still companies competing with SBC despite all of the road blocks they put up. I hope IPC hangs on to give SBC Hell!

There was a non-competition agreement signed. That's the reason Texas.net dropped them fast and didn't have to worry about any repercussions of breaking a contract.

IP Communications may not have accomplished anything to you... but there is some good stuff that happened in this company...

First off, they did create a laid back work environment in the beginning. I can't truly name a single person who actually "quit" the company. They were all layoffs. People at IPC loved their job in the beginning.

Of all the groups that were actually worked tough on the trouble side of things, CTTU always had the worst times.. they had 8 people at most turning up customers, and their managers were always too strict about everything. He didn't understand that there were going to be times when customers simply couldn't be turned up due to line conditions.

I am not going to touch any other parts of the company. What I will say, however, is that although Sean didn't do his best with this company, his history shows that he had good experience elsewhere, turning other companies around before starting his own to take over the southern part of the US with high speed internet and voice lines. He was capable of turning 2 companies around and get them to become financially stable before creating IP. That shows a good thing. The bad side however is that while IPC failed, it failed for a reason -- too much competition, and the government wasn't regulating LECs well enough to prevent all the problems they would cause.

Just my 2 cents...

Yeah buddy... you say it brother! IPC can give 'em hell! ... of course I've decided to put the blame on Steve Nowick... When he was brought in to the company, I believe he was only brought in to cover Sean's ass, but instead he fucked it over. From what I understood he had a history of working for companies that actually ended up failing...

Yeah buddy... you say it brother! IPC can give 'em hell! ... of course I've decided to put the blame on Steve Nowick... When he was brought in to the company, I believe he was only brought in to cover Sean's butt, but instead he screwed it over. From what I understood he had a history of working for companies that actually ended up failing...

If there are two things I agree with throughout these postings, they are:
1) Too many chiefs and not enough native americans. Hopefully investors will stop looking at resumes and titles, or at least look at the right ones! I've seen other companies fail (as a consultant and not related to the company management) because the first thing they did was go out and hire a bunch of VP's. Why? Because, as stated before, the management are ex-telco hacks and the first thing they do is build a big company hierarchy in a small company startup. Recipe for failure from the get-go! Oh, and let's not forget the destructive ego mongering that takes place - pitiful.

2) Management does not understand the net, nor the working paradigms. I am baffled to walk into Internet technology company and see a mass of valuable office floor space occupied by techs and cubicles. Did it ever occur to management that they could save substantial cash by using their own product and have people work from home or less expensive satellite locations?

But how would they be able to show off the new Beemer?

I am not affiliated with IP Communications in any way, nor do I even live in the southwest, but it sounds like a company that is following the same pattern of bullsh*t baffles brains... I hope the investors clue in.

All political correctness aside, I understand your point.
I agree that some companies take the wrong approach to the conduction of daily operations. Some spend where they should be saving. I have worked for companies like that.
Some come around, some don't. Some want to make a real go of things, others just want to create an entity to be bought out.
My personal feeling is, from an outside perspective of course, is that IP was interested in making a real showing. Management convolution is not new. However, I have spoken with their techs in the field, seen their lineups in the COs, and personally felt that their direction was good.
There's always inside stuff to bitch about. It always happens that no one really minds until they get laid off.
Anyway, I want to see IP come out of this, the same way I want to see Covad survive, independent of SBC.

Thanks for clarifying that.

You obviously don't know anything about Steve Nowick or his history of success. Isn't it best to keep your mouth shut unless you are well educated on a subject?

Sean and Steve are very highly skilled people, and they have done all they can do to keep IP running full speed ahead. Sometimes, no matter how hard you work, things go wrong. I think that IP's recent issues are an example of just that. Shit happens.

Who's ass are you sucking.......Rantou and I know what it is like to work for a bunch of big headed CEO's. I mean come on, I think you are the one who is un-educated. We both made it through many thick and thin situations with that company and not one time did the Higher-Ups admit that they were responsible for the demise of IP. If anyone should be held accountable it should be Steve and Sean. Wake the f@#k up man!!!

kcharg
former-IP Employee and not afraid to say it!!!

well, I only have experience with the outside field forces with Southwestern Bell... and I can assure you that there is no direct sabotage for CLECs from the technician's standpoint. Ordering, provisioning, etc., may be what you're talking about.

But I've seen deliberate sabotage of SWBT's repair bureau by CLECs--so I don't have a lot of sympathy for them.

As a matter of fact, I am quite familiar with the situation. I am a former IP employee (I left voluntarily about a year ago), and met Sean on numerous occasions. I had the opportunity to speak with him in depth about his vision and plans for IPC. He has done very well; I doubt that anyone could have kept IP afloat as long as he has. As for Steve Nowick, I only met and discussed IP with him once. I left shortly after he came onboard, but he certainly impressed me with his knowledge and expertise.

These recent layoffs are quite unfortunate, but if they allow IP to survive I would find them most decidedly fortunate. Fortunate that IP's executive management had the foresight to slam on the brakes before things got irreconcilable.

Let me ask you this: Could YOU have done a better job? If not, why? Who do you think could have?

(Insert awkward silence here)