29 July 2009
CIS Internet is dead.
Posted by Connor under: Clinton; Internet; Technology .
Robert Kramer III performed a great mitzvah for for the world when he ran down and sued into the ground a number of spammers based in the United States. Although it is unlikely that Bob Kramer, owner of CIS Internet Services ever saw even a tenth part of the more than $10 billion (yes, billion with a ‘B’) that he was awarded, his name will live on in Internet lore.
Locally, it is a much different story. In the early years of the Internet Age, waaay back in 1996 or so, CIS Internet was a pioneer. A local link to this whole Interweb superhighway thingie. He was the first locally available wireless service provider for residents and businesses outside the service area of Mediacom and DSL.
Recently though, CIS has been characterized by poor to nonexistent customer service. Bob as primary technical contact was so irascible he made Gary Boden look like the milkman of human kindness. He maintained a sense of entitlement to private and public locations where he had been allowed to install antennas for his wireless service. Basically, it was Bob’s Internet and we were lucky to have it.
In the last several months a number of businesses had contacted us at Riverfront Technology saying that their CIS connection had been down for several days and they could not get a response from CIS. Some of these were very prominent citizens and businesses. We simply shrugged our shoulders and helped them transition to another provider.
We speculated that Bob probably owned all the equipment outright, having long since paid for everything. Therefore aside from his bandwidth bill from his upstream provider every month, everything else he made was profit. Ergo, he just didn’t give a shit about his customers any more. Those what worked would continue to send him money and to hell with those who didn’t. He would ride the gravy train as far as it went, so the theory went.
Of course that level of service was bound to draw unwanted attention and we heard that the Iowa Attorney General’s office began fielding complaints earlier this year.
So, no real shock when we learned today that CIS seemed to have been completely down since Monday-ish.
Not shocking per se, but surprisingly dickheaded.
Because he didn’t completely turn things off. He turned off his DNS servers for sure, which means that most of cis.net is un-findable to the world. But he must either have some services hosted elsewhere or still have something running. Mail for example: cis.net and other domains he hosts appear to still be accepting mail as usual instead of being down and out and rendering the mail undeliverable.
This means that everyone sending mail to cis.net and the domains hosted there thinks everything is normal and has no idea why no one is replying to them.
Furthermore, for those people who use web-based e-mail they can’t get to their mail. Maybe ever. And for those people who have domains hosted with CIS (KROS Radio, for one) those domains will now be in limbo until control of them can be wrested from the smoldering hulk of CIS and transferred to new web hosting companies. That is if those companies had good, current copies of their websites.
We have had some reports that Bob has been in touch with the authorities, calling from an undisclosed location (I’m totally not kidding!) and claiming to have been cut off by his upstream provider, Qwest. He has promised to try to get his customers access to their sites. I’m dubious. One, unless he was totally daft (a distinct possibility, I’ll grant you) he would never have had only one upstream provider. He should have had at least a DSL line or a Mediacom connection for emergency failover. Two, if he was shutting the doors and wanted to do the right thing, he could have just handed the backup tapes (assuming they exist) ot the keys to the server room to someone who could help out all those people who provided him with a rather comfy little living for the past ten-plus years.
Riverfront Technology is offering help sifting through the rubble and relocating.
There are also a couple of companies already sniffing about looking to pick up on the wireless ISP market in Clinton. So, it might all end up being for the good. Sure is good riddance to CIS, which was a walking corpse for a long time.
29 July 2009 at 6:20 pm.
“Recently though, CIS has been characterized by poor to nonexistent customer service”.
Depends on your definition of recently. Many years ago (maybe 10?) I had an issue with CIS. A month’s worth of phone calls and emails didn’t resolve the issue so I switched (back) to Earthlink. An email asking that my CIS website be taken down was met by outrage by Kramer, who accused me, essentially, of going behind his back. (I’m not paranoid, why do you ask?)
Good riddance indeed.
20 September 2009 at 3:18 pm.
non existent. ..if you actually cared about researching anything about cis before you wrote this.. you’d read that two of the customer services reps moved away and ones in federal prison. that left tracy and bob to run the entire thing by themselves. and with 5000 customers? you could imagine it’s pretty hard to answer the 3 and 4 calls AT THE EXACT SAME TIME that would all come in at the exact same time.. and before they could check messages to call the customers missed back, more were calling in. people were completely retarded when it came to their internet. they had to argue with customers that theyre computers not working had nothing to do with their internet (which they could look up if internet was down in their area or not) had to waste hours daily telling customers they provide INTERNET SERVICE and dont fix computers in anyway.
they didnt know the internet was going to go down so it wasnt dickheadish ..qwest shut down on their own without warning.. because qwest has been charging them for servers and things that my dad doesnt even have for years now and wont return the money they’ve paid on them. annnd way to be retarded how many web sites have said it’s 12 billion (yes billion with a “b”) yet you turn that into a 10, annnnd he has recieved a tenth. buut good try
21 September 2009 at 4:35 pm.
Let me explain one important fact! Everyone has their hand out. I would bet that when you shop at Wal-Mart, you don’t think about the smaller people places who are family owned, struggling to earn an honest living because they’re not backed by billions of dollars in capital like Wal-Mart is. You could think of CIS being a small family oriented business, a sincere group of very hard working folks who actually do care about its customer base.
As the interent became so commercialized, companies like qwest, mediacom, comcast, insight communications and sprint began lowing the costs of residential internet links in exchange for packages like telephone, cable, and internet, all in one. The one thing they didn’t do is lower their upstream costs to the small resellers like CIS so they could lower the costs to its end users.
As far as the user who thinks that except for the upstream, all else is profit, I have news for you! I worked for CIS during a period when the wireless infrastructure was being assembled, and I know there are fixed expenses, as well as recurring expenses associated with this type of business. You don’t take into consideration the costs of the tower rental, colocate space, or the point to point T1’s, fiber, the bullshit 911 taxes on inbound only lines that CIS got screwed on. Oh, by the way, we’re talking about a few hundred! Start adding all that up, and explain to me how all that adds up to being all profit!
As far as the service, I can tell you for sure that for the customers of CIS which had DSL, the only actual internet outages would have been a result of qwest itself, and on the very rare occasion, an act of God! I’m serious. Anything else was your computer.
As far as the wireless service, every effort was made by the installer to make the service as trouble free as possible, but sometimes things do happen, of which CIS has no control over. Wireless is NOT and never will be a guaranteed service and is always subject to interference and is relitivelly expensive by comparison. Those who had no other option were happy to have it, and if there were interference issues, there WAS backup dialup lines available for use as a last resort. IT WAS NOT BECAUSE THE “TOWER WAS DOWN”.
Some folks bully CIS as never answering the phone, or returning calls. Sure, maybe, tell your neighbors to pay their bills ontime so they don’t receive automatically generated late statements and additional charges. Those were among the top of the callers list in my honest opinion.
Secondly, customers tend to blame the internet provider when their antivirus software updated and changed how their computers communicated with the internet, especially email. If you don’t know how to use it, DON’T INSTALL IT and cause your internet provider the headaches!
On a personal note, many of you on various threads have severelly criticized the Kramer family and CIS. My experience with them has always been heartfelt. Bob and Tracy have litterelly worked 24 hours a day around the clock to make the service the best that it could be. They’ve traded shifts, and I filled in some of the gaps, while taking calls from 9am to 6pm. I offer my warmest sympothy for the family business that I used to work for. Sure there were differences of opinion, but in the end, the main objective was always the customers.
Let’s all stop trashing CIS Internet Services. The descision to close CIS was not easy, that I can guarantee!
12 January 2010 at 7:55 pm.
I would have to agree with that.