The bankruptcy filing, explains that Worldcom and UUnet threatened to shut them down for non payment of $2.3 million (plus unspecified past dues) in bandwidth. To escape this fate, Smartworld Technologies, freewwweb and Smartworld Communications, have filed Chapter 11, and proposed a deal with Juno, one of 10 possible suitors they approached: freewwweb will refer new subscribers, and their existing 700k subscribers, to Juno, for $10 cash per subscriber, and $30 in Juno stock. They will use the proceeds to pay their creditors. Juno has given them until July 28th to put this deal away. Smartworld Technologies are basically saying to the creditors that really matter (bandwidth providers), if you don't switch us off, then we'll dribble you cash from Juno. Juno also specifies that Smartworld not sell the stock they are being given at too great a rate.. We doubt the Juno stockholders would appreciate this deal.. They are in effect being asked to buy money-losing subscribers for $50 each? None of the Juno payments appear to happen until December onwards.. a long wait for the bandwidth guys!

The Chapter 11 is also a call to tender for competing offers, although it is doubtful that anyone would be interested in 700k subscribers who pay nothing, and have proved to generate far insufficient revenue than that clawed back from banner ads. The filing also lists over half a million dollars owed to unsecured creditors, listed as "advertisers", who are likely the poor suckers who signed up to promote freewwweb online in return for cash. They would be the last in line to get paid. Since Freewwweb and SmartWorld are in this state, it leaves the those who signed up at freeXdsl.com and agreed to a $500 cancel fee, in a very awkward situation.. It would seem that obtaining DSL elsewhere, but not canceling and paying up, would be the best course of action for them, as the chance they would ever be provided with freeXDSL are zero.

---

Average user rating