The liquidators of bankrupt Dutch telecommunications group KPNQwest said Friday that they would be forced to shut down Europe's largest data network in days, after a court ruled against them in a dispute with its lender banks. "It (the shutdown) will be within a matter of days," KPNQwest administrator Ed Meijer told Reuters late Friday. The german website of KPNQwest has already been shut down. The shutdown could jeopardize crucial online functions for the company's 100,000 European business clients who rely on it for business from e-mail transmissions to Web access. Read more... KPNQwest is the leading pan-European data communications and hosting company and delivers a full range of carrier and corporate networking solutions as well as hosting, multimedia and Internet services to European businesses via its whole owned fibre optic network, the EuroRingsTM. This network is the fastest, most advanced fibre optic backbone network in Europe, spanning 25,000 km and connected 60 cities in 18 countries, 28 hosting centres and 14 high- capacity metro area networks. Altogether this results in the most extensive IP coverage in Europe. KPNQwest was declared bankrupt at the end of last month after its supervisory board, including representatives of its founders and key shareholders KPN and Qwest, resigned. Now ISP's and backbone providers are forced to reroute their lines around the KPNQwest network. Pessimistic assumptions include that the european part of the internet might receive a huge performance hit on Monday or even worse could totally break down due to heavy load. Partly Source: Reuters