Two DSL Providers Close Their Doors

As a sign that the industrywide problems can’t be cured with a simple interest rate cut, DSL providers Planet Systems Network (PSN) and Jato Communications have joined the rolls of ISPs shutting down operations.

PSN is working to transition its customers to new service providers. Customers using NorthPoint Residential DSL are being transitioned to Telocity. Transition details on customers using other CLECs, and PSN’s dial-up customers, are scant.

Meanwhile Jato closed its doors on Friday. On Thursday the company sent its remaining 68 employees — it once had as many as 575 — home with what little severance pay it could produce.

As of last Friday, the company was reportedly engaged in last-minute negotiations with Lucent Technologies, its largest secured creditor, to form a joint venture to salvage some of its operations. Lucent has been struggling with its own problems, however, and those talks appear to have gone nowhere.

Jato has held discussions with at least four potential buyers in the past, but nothing came of those talks either.