The abandoned network of bankrupt KPNQwest went online again
yesterday after staff left it in limbo late last week before
shutting it down on Wednesday.
"The liquidators have apparently requested for a small skeleton
staff to be placed in the network operations centre," KPN spokesman
Bram Oudshoorn said.
KPN is one of KPNQwest's co-founders and was a major customer
before KPNQwest was declared bankrupt in May and users abandoned
the network.
A group of phone companies led by KPN paid to keep the KPNQwest
network up for part of June and three weeks into July.
The funding ended last Friday when staff at the network operations
centre in The Hague walked out, leaving the network running. It was
shut down on Wednesday, only to be turned on again a day
later.
Swathes of the KPNQwest network have been sold off at fire-sale
prices since the bankruptcy. KPN has bid on part of the network
that runs through the northwest of Europe.
The bid is for an intact network, which may explain why the
liquidators opted to turn the lights back on at KPNQwest, said
Oudshoorn.
Earlier this month, KPNQwest employees pulled the plug on the Ebone
network, which was run from Brussels and was independent of the
rest of the KPNQwest network. Most of Ebone's assets have since
been acquired by Interoute Communications of London.
Talks on the sale of remaining parts of the KPNQwest network
continue, but with the customers gone, insiders are not expecting a
deal soon.
KPNQwest's network was once Europe's largest with 25,000km of
fibre-optic cable spanning 18 countries. Customers were given about
six weeks to find an alternative service provider, which KPNQwest
even advised them to do.