SkyWi deadbeats independent carriers, New Mexico customers

In a letter sent to the New Mexico Public Regulations Commission (PRC) on Tuesday, SkyWi said it no longer has the financial resources to do business in the state. The PRC has subsequently and bluntly warned customers of SkyWi and its subsidiaries that they should either seek other providers or assurances from SkyWi that their service has been taken over by another telecommunications provider. All this comes on news that SkyWi has failed to pay other telecommunications carriers besides Qwest and the issuing of a new order from the New Mexico PRC requiring notices to be sent out at least 20 days before service interruption.

At the end of January, the New Mexico PRC heard testimony from Windstream, Tularosa Basin Telephone Company and Penasco Valley Telephone Cooperative saying they hadn't seen any money from SkyWi for several months - Windstream said it not been paid since July 2008. Based upon the testimony, the New Mexico PRC issued a revised order requiring 20 days notification of termination of service to both the PRC and SkyWi.

The drama continued into last week when on Feb. 2, SkyWi announced it would be selling its VoIP operations to California-based CLEC Telekenex, followed by an appearance of Telekenex in front of the New Mexico PRC and a subsequent terse press release on Feb. 4 by Telekenex saying it had stopped its talks to buy the assets.

An attendee at last week's New Mexico PRC meeting implied that Telekenex seemed to be ill-prepared for the public hearing and tried to steamroller the proceedings. "Frankly, when you're before a body like the PRC, just be humble, factual, and honest," said John Brown, president and co-founder of City Link Fiber. "If you're anything other than that, you're in trouble."

Brown, whose company has a city-wide franchise in Albuquerque, N.M., to deploy a neutral, open-access fiber optic network, said Telekenex asked to be heard before the PRC without following any of standard processes, a move that Qwest objected to. The PRC agreed to hear out Telekenex but would not take any action based upon the company's statements.

Telekenex asserted that they were the only provider/entity that could take over SkyWi's customer base in New Mexico, said Brown. One of the PRC commissioners asked if the company was licensed to do business in the state. The spokesperson for Telekenex said yes, but a PRC staffer returned two minutes later with no records of the company either being licensed to be a CLEC or to have a foreign corporate registration in the state - a fact FierceVoIP confirmed with a spokesperson from the New Mexico PRC.

Brown said there were "three dozen other" service providers in the state that could provide replacement VoIP services to displaced SkyWi customers, and Telekenex also misrepresented the capital costs for migrating customers to another service provider.

Another problem uncovered at the hearing was a discrepancy between the number of customers SkyWi said it had verses a higher number Telekenex cited during its presentation. The PRC wanted to know why the SkyWi number was lower, but Telekenex had no answer. Further complicating matters, said Brown, was that there was no SkyWi representative at the hearing.

For more:
- KDBC News 4 carries the AP story. Post [1].