We're posting followups so that our customers know we are on top of this situation, and are doing everything that we can - whatever that may be. Obviously our options are limited. So many customers are stranded, so many are going to fire up live streaming tomorrow morning for their church service - and it isn't going to work.

Our goal is to keep our commitments to our customers, and if we can't we'll do whatever we can to help them secure alternative services.

We appreciate other CDNs who have offered our customers discounted pricing, and have made their sales teams available on the weekend to turn new customers up right away.

Our only goal is to help them. We've emailed, we've posted - and we're still receiving frantic calls asking why the service isn't working. We're using any and all channels to communicate with our customers.

Well UK2 today said that the decision "... was out of our hands." So who would that leave?

Well what you just read was the "notice" we were given. That was it, the entire email.

I mean if you don't believe it you don't believe it, but again there it is right in front of you.

We fully tested this solution for months, and have been running thousands of customers on this network for additional months before this no-warning termination.

Would you say the same thing to the hosting providers buying $1 per megabit transit from HE? How about $2 per megabit peering from Comcast? What kind of pricing would be okay with you?

I mean Comcast basically did the same thing to Level3, but Level3 happen to have the money to pay.

Where do you draw the line? This would be no different than American Airlines betting their business on obtaining jet fuel, and then one day the fuel truck doesn't show up. "Oh sorry, we aren't selling you fuel anymore".

We have (well now had) many Fortune 500 companies utilizing our services - we aren't a bunch of amateurs, and our customers will back that up.

Believe me, we tried everything to avoid this, trying to understand what the problem is, and if we can pay more or limit usage or do ANYTHING to prevent termination. Their answer: No. Goodbye. Tough Luck.

Obviously UK2 is not sane...

"We are unable to continue allowing our clients to run CDN services within our 100TB network. We are currently updating our Terms of Service to include this requirement for all clients. I would ask that you immediately comply with this new policy update; otherwise we will be required to disable your services. I apologize for any inconvenience this might cause you."

There you have it. First communication includes an immediate demand to terminate service, and oh yeah, they are "updating" their ToS.

How is this about advertising? Our entire service is down. We are helping our customers move to other CDN providers.

We are out of business here, and are doing right by our customers moving them to our competitors. We're not selling anything or taking orders.

This is about something much larger - infrastructure providers terminating services with no notice and no reason.

It could happen to anyone for any reason. You thought your dedicated server was safe - but think again.

Don't know who BlueToast is - and I am sure Slashdot can confirm this for you that it isn't us.

I've been up for about 72 hours straight helping customers move to CloudFront and MaxCDN, and just happened to refresh /. and saw this post.

How do you say that we "over use" bandwidth? We purchase dedicated servers from a company that provides 100TBs of bandwidth with each server, and the majority of our servers use MUCH LESS than 100TBs of bandwidth. This is the service that has been sold to us, so how are we "over using" bandwidth? Again UK2 did confirm that their business model fully supports offering 100TBs of bandwidth with each server. And again, we're using much less.

If they can't provide this service, then why are they offering it? Why did they terminate SimpleCDN, but continue to offer the service to others, knowing they can't provide it?

Why did UK2 say the decision was "out of their hands"? Did SoftLayer force them to shutdown SimpleCDN? But then why SimpleCDN? Why not all of their customers doing 100TBs on their servers?

So many questions, and so far no answers from the "giants".

Thanks,

John
SimpleCDN Support

UK2 also confirmed to us many times that their business model fully supports 100TBs of transfer, and SimpleCDN has been utilizing these servers for many months now without problem.

Again, more emails from Ditlev and UK2...

"We have no problem with anyone doing 100tb/month - month after month, our business model fully support that"

The 100TB website still advertises 100TBs of transfer with each server, along with "As you would expect unmetered bandwidth from 100TB is truly unmetered and unshared, with no limits and no small print. Unmetered servers use exactly the same SoftLayer network as their 100TB equivalents and are fitted with 1000Mbit ports."

So 100TB is still advertising and selling this service to others, but for some reason SimpleCDN is turned off? Why was SimpleCDN singled out, while this "offer" is still being made to others?

Why was the service provided for months, until one day a demand was sent requiring us to immediately shutdown all servers?

Maybe yes maybe no - tonight in an email to an angry SimpleCDN Customer Ditlev (pres of UK2) confirmed that UK2 apparently had "no control" over this...

--- Obviously there are two sides to this story, and hopefully we will get a chance to air ours. For now, I can only say that we are sorry about the problems this may have caused to anyone, but that it was out of our hands. Best, Ditlev ---

So who exactly forced UK2 to shutdown SimpleCDN? Was it SoftLayer?

Time will tell - but so far it seems Frank Wilson has been telling SimpleCDN's side of the story truthfully from day one.

People have been having a hard time believing that some sort of "conspiracy" exists to remove SimpleCDN from the marketplace - but each passing hour seems to support this more and more.

What does this mean for the thousands of hosting companies that rely on infrastructure providers like SoftLayer?

Again I want to remind our 5,000+ customers that our entire support staff is available to help transition to other CDN providers, and we'll do everything and anything that we can to help during this terrible situation.