OUTAGE: network shutdown

[Sean Donelan <sean () donelan com>]

As most folks are aware, Northpoint Communications is/has/will shutdown
its DSL network.  The shutdown seems to be proceeding at different speeds
in different states.  State PUC's don't seem to have a proceedure for
handling customers abandoned by a failing provider.

Originally, I was viewing this as a shutdown of an end network, hard on
the users of that network but not really an Internet service outage.  But
AT&T's description of Northpoint as a wholesaler meant the shutdown affected
multiple ISPs.  So I'm including northpoint's going out of business in
my tracking of outages because it affected multiple Internet networks.