Will SLAs hold up in court?

It's hard to say how Service Level Agreements (SLA) will hold up to the scrutiny of a court, but one ISP is being put to the test.

Late last month Gateway.net, the ISP service that Gateway 2000 sells with its PCs, filed suit against Web America Networks, an ISP in Dallas. The suit sites poor service quality.

Essentially, Gateway.net resells Web America's Internet access services. Gateway.net claims that Web America has repeatedly failed to provide Internet access and e-mail services to Gateway.net customers.

The suit sites frequent busy signals and users inability to download their e-mail when they do get connected to the network. Gateway is not filing suit to get better services from Web America. Gateway is filing suit to be released from the agreement it has with the ISP saying the relationship is hurting their reputation.

This suit opens up a can of worms for ISPs and business users. Now with more businesses setting up Web sites that contribute to their bottom line, they too can file suits for compensation based on poor service. And maybe it's fair to take your ISP to court if x number of users can't access your Web site to buy your company's latest gadget, but if this does turn into a trend it may actually hurt the further development of strong SLAs. This in turn hurts business users.

ISPs may instead choose to take the safe road. SLAs as they stand today, need much improvement, with most only promising network availability and minimum latency guarantees. What types of guarantees are you looking for? Is your company in a position where they would sue their ISP if their service was not up to snuff? We will keep a close eye on how this case turns out. It may be more telling than anyone would like.

Denise Pappalardo is a senior editor for Network World, covering ISPs, VPNs and related topics. Reach her at denisep@nww.com.