Cold War II?

ZDNet
12.05.2000

The WhISPers international patrol reports that numerous ISPs in Russia and Ukraine are dealing with a growing number of angry users of ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger. Apparently, AOL blocked several large ISPs in the former Soviet Union from accessing its network three months ago. By now ISPs such as Rostelecom (www.rt.ru), Russia's largest backbone provider, and Moscow-focused Zenon (www.zenon.net) are feeling the pain. "Rostelecom even asked its uplink Cable & Wireless to help, but to no avail," Zenon's chief network dude, Victor Below, whISPered in the Ear. "It seems that either AOL or ICQ has come up with some new weird policy that if they register an attack from somewhere, they block that network without any notice." Now that customers are finding out that some Russian and Ukrainian ISPs have ICQ access and some don't, the churn dynamic is taking on a new dimension in that far-off land. AOL continues to ignore the issue and won't say why it blocked ISPs that are complaining.