EarthLink Puts Temporary Hold on New Orders for High-Speed Access

Perhaps you can’t be too rich or too thin, but apparently you can have too many customers.

EarthLink Network, the Pasadena-based Internet service provider, stopped accepting most new orders for its high-speed network access on Jan. 1. The company’s broadband partners--Pacific Bell, GTE and UUNet--have not been able to take on new customers as quickly as EarthLink expected, said Mike Lunsford, executive vice president of broadband services. PacBell is still accepting new customers in Los Angeles and Orange counties and the Inland Empire, but other would-be Southland customers--along with potential customers in San Francisco, New York, Dallas and Charlotte, N.C.--will have to wait another week or two for the backlog to subside, he said.

EarthLink, which currently has about 32,000 broadband customers, hopes to add to that number after the suspension ends in another week or two. But EarthLink was forced to postpone its broadband launches in Boston and Minneapolis from January to February, he said.