Saw this posted on lightreading..

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?site=lightreading&doc_id=15263

Interesting read. I wasn't aware Yipes had filed for Chapter 11!

I have to wonder if Cogent is a slush fund write-off for Cisco? Nice to be making money and even nicer to have another company to write-off profits to. Only makes sense from a tax point-of-view though.

IMO, it'll be tough for them to fight through the mountain of debt and high operating costs and build a cashflow positive business that sustains them for many years to come. :eek:

Ive been saying it forever about cogent, but no one wanted to listen :( it will be very tough if not impossible, even if cogent continues to turn up new customers at the rate they are now. It seems from their recent so called inforcement of ratio their seeing network pains too....

Hope they get better, have a couple of customers who use them and would hate to see anything bad come of it.

Well...

They are backed up by a few companies /Partnerships etc...

I dont think they would be stupid enough to be at a lose of so much money and continue to operate... Yes they got money to play with but this does not make them silly...

There is a big master plan for Cognet and if its not to become a very profitable entity alone it will probably just be a tax write-off for most of the companies involved.

We can estimate and suggest where thre going to be in the future but i say there is something going on behind closed doors in the Cognet offices!

They need to secure some new big deals that will create a new edge to there business module, becoming not only profitable but respected.

Kind regards,

I dont think they would be stupid enough to be at a lose of so much money and continue to operate
*cough*
Enron
*cough*

They need to secure some new big deals that will create a new edge to there business module, becoming not only profitable but respected.

How about buy Worldcom? :)

Originally posted by sbrad

*cough*
Enron
*cough*

Enron was fruad, atleast with cogent you have GATT accounting which let's you do those speical things. heck swaps are good if managed properly.

the best way i think, would be that a firm is required to file what they file to the IRS. then you would see some real interesting numbers

I thought Cogent was getting tons of customers. Growing faster than all the other carriers. I also think there is a bigger picture to Cogent. I thought think a company like Cisco is stupid, they are a leader.

Cogent puts pressure on everyone else to give us better pricing. I still think bandwidth is too expensive.

What do you base your opinion that bandwidth is too expensive on?

-Brendan

Based on all the hype that the internet will change everyones lives. Being able to watch high quality dvd movies through the internet. Prices need to come down bigtime for that to happen.

Streaming is 10 times better than it was 2 years ago and bandwidth is allot cheaper. Companies have tried to come up with many ways to compress media (real media, vivo, asf etc..)cause bandwidth is not exactly dirt cheap. Cable modems and DSL modems can do upwards of 7Mbps but how many people actually get that? If bandwidth was cheaper I am sure companies will give more to the consumer.

Originally posted by HRBrendan
What do you base your opinion that bandwidth is too expensive on?

-Brendan

Brendan ..

It is called, "I Have no idea how this works"

there are many reasons why bandwidth is the price that it is, do you have any idea how much it costs to build a backbone in the US alone ?, or how much it costs to maintain that same backbone ?

Carriers charging 200 bucks per Mbit are not posting profits, but loss, Cogent is some screwed up plan that will never work

Bandwidth WILL get cheaper, but not becuase of Cogent (and trust me, they are not the ones pushign pricing down), but becuase of more and more usage of those same pipes that costed billions to build, with more usage and slow recovery of initial investment you will see cheaper bandwidth

As for cable modems .. 40 bucks for 2 or 3 Mbit (or even 1) is a terrific deal, the technology HAS caught up, just take a look at Time Warne's new "In Demand" technology, it streams any movie in their collection with DVD like quality into your CABLE box .. not every advance in technology HAS to be for your desktop computer.

Reading http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?site=lightreading&doc_id=15263

would appear to indicate that Cogent are in some financial trouble.

_If_ Cogent went bust, where would this place users of their network, such as Rackshack etc?

Kind regards

<<Merged to this thread>>

Well, remove Cogent from the page and there you have it:

http://www.rackshack.net/aboutus/networks.asp

I don't know of many people who'd only put up a 100% one provider network.

<<Merged to this thread>>

Well Cogent is a publically traded company so just pull a recent 10k filing to see how bad they are doing. Bad news is that i think they are not going to survive in its present state. Good news is that Cisco put a 400MM investment in them so if Cogent goes bankrupt Cisco will most likely take over.

Originally posted by matrosov
Well Cogent is a publically traded company so just pull a recent 10k filing to see how bad they are doing. Bad news is that i think they are not going to survive in its present state. Good news is that Cisco put a 400MM investment in them so if Cogent goes bankrupt Cisco will most likely take over.

yeah, wich brings the question, why woudl cisco go in direct competition with their clients ?

if Cogent goes bankrupt Cisco will most likely take over And that is a good thing :)

Crego, people are always looking for something for nothing, take a look at people wanting nukes on here for the cost of a piece of bubble gum or maybe you would prefer unlimited hosting for .99 cents :) but anyhow people as consumers are always going to want something for nothing, and then when they get it their going to find someway to bitch about it.

Everyones talking about how we are going to destory ourselves, I have no doubt about it....

Interesting how a couple of months ago when a couple of people said its going to be hard for cogent to make it, those people were barraged with how stupid that statement is and how cogent was going to make it for sure. Now that multiple published sources agree with us, it proves how people are able to overlook the obvious because of greed.

Yea cisco doesnt know a thing about running a network, their hardware people, if they new how to run a network, they wouldnt need cogent in the first place. Cisco would go down the tubes if they tried to branch out into offering nationwide network services, their having a hard enough time selling their equipment.

It's interesting to see people having a good debate about the viability of a firm.

Now does anybody know how to read a 10-K, very few people do, it took me all the 80's to understand them and how to fIgure out the EBITA does not mean anything, PE's don't mean anything.

Anybody out there sit down and read all the CEO/treas/ investors notes about cogent that are filed or the interviews that exsist. Interesting to see that some people think they will Fail tommarow or next week or the end of this year ( my numbers dictate if there is failure it's 28 months away based on present burn rate ).

Sit and read. Is cogent a good investment as a stock, no, why better returns elseware. is cogent a carrier for webhost to use, yes, just have a solid redundancy plan in place. consider it insurance.

Notes: I have no positions in cogent. nor any of it's partners.

Mike

Interesting how a couple of months ago when a couple of people said its going to be hard for cogent to make it, those people were barraged with how stupid that statement is and how cogent was going to make it for sure. Now that multiple published sources agree with us, it proves how people are able to overlook the obvious because of greed.

Charles, I have also read post from people telling how financially *stable* and great Yipes is. Yet they are filing......

The point is, no one has a cyrstal ball. I agree that research and networking will certainly help, but in the end, only time tells the truth!

I agree unbillycord, i myself predicted a while back ago on this very board that yipes wouldnt be able to sustain itself, but that doesnt mean that yipes didnt have a awesome network, it does, and cogent has a large network, although i would shy away from awesome still lots of problems with it. ANyhow what im getting at is even though a company/network may or may not fail, it all boils down to how good that network is while it is in service. As long as you have a contingency plan in case the network goes down or goes out of business, i see no reason not to use a network if it fits your needs and wants. If we all worried about whether one of our vendors was going to go out of business every second of the day, we would all have had heartattack years ago. What i am trying to get across in the above post is that its rediculous for anyone to say that 100% that a company/networks going to be fiscally fine, exp. when you can see what network/companys business model is, and the business model is indicative to failure. Yipes should pull out of chap 11 and cogent should be a in business for at least another year. Which means that either of these 2 carriers are worth looking at still.

Cogent has a good network, crappy peering. They continue to pile more and more people on their network straining the peering points even more. Seems the only way they get new peering is to buy up old providers and take their agreements. But when you look at what your paying do you even think about a few bad peering points? My clients that request cogent dont mind after they see the savings in their pocket.