Earthlink 2010 Annual Report Download - page 35

Table of Contents
with state highway authorities, local governments, transit authorities, local telephone companies and other utilities, railroads, long distance
carriers and other parties. For example, if we lose access to a right-of-
way, we may need to spend significant amounts to remove and relocate our
facilities.
General Risks
We may be unable to retain sufficient qualified personnel, and the loss of any of our key executive officers could adversely affect us.
Our business depends on the continued services of our senior management and other key personnel and our ability to retain and motivate
them effectively. Competition for qualified personnel, including management, technical and sales personnel, may increase in a recovering
economic environment. Acquisitions and workforce reductions may affect our ability to retain or replace key personnel, harm employee morale
and productivity or disrupt our business. Key employees may depart because of issues relating to the uncertainty and difficulty of integration or a
desire not to remain with us following a merger transaction. In addition, reductions in workforce have resulted in less redundancy of mission
critical roles. Effective succession planning is important to our long-
term success. Failure to ensure effective transfer of knowledge and
transitions involving key employees could hinder execution of our business strategies. Finally, the loss of any of our key executives could impair
our ability to implement our acquisition integration plans, execute our business strategy or otherwise have a material adverse effect on us.
Interruption or failure of our network and information systems and other technologies could impair our ability to provide our services, which
could damage our reputation and harm our operating results.
Our network, network operations centers, central offices, corporate headquarters and those of our third party service providers are
vulnerable to damage or interruption from earthquakes, hurricanes and other natural disasters, terrorist attacks, floods, fires, power loss,
telecommunications failures, break ins, human error, computer denial of service attacks, computer hackings, computer viruses, worms or other
attempts to harm our systems, and similar events. Some of our systems are not fully redundant, and our disaster recovery planning may not be
adequate. Further, any security breaches, such as misappropriation, misuse, leakage, falsification or accidental release or loss of information
maintained in our information technology systems and networks, including customer, personnel and vendor data, could damage our reputation
and require us to expend significant capital and other resources to remedy any such security breach. We may experience service interruptions or
system failures in the future. In addition, as we consider potential outsource or network consolidation opportunities, we may experience service
interruptions despite our efforts to minimize the impact to customers. Any service interruption adversely affects our ability to operate our
business and could result in an immediate loss of revenues. If we experience frequent or persistent system or network failures, our reputation and
brand could be permanently harmed. We may make significant capital expenditures to increase the reliability of our systems, but these capital
expenditures may not achieve the results we expect. The occurrence of any such network, email or information system-
related events or security
breaches could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial position, results of operations and cash flows.
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