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NEW YORK - President Bush famously spoke of ''the Internets'' in 2004. Well, they're here.

Since March 13, customers of two large Internet providers, Cogent Communications Group Inc. and TeliaSonera AB are unable to contact each other through the Internet, unless they have backup connections from other compan- ies.

This means that some U.S. Web sites hosted by Cogent customers are inaccessible to surfers in the Nordic countries, where Sweden-based TeliaSonera� is the largest telecommunications operator. It's like Cogent and TeliaSonera customers are on different Internets.

''Basically, parts of the Internet can't talk to each other,'' said Earl Zmijewski of the Internet data division at Renesys Corp., which keeps track of how carriers route traffic over the Internet.

It's not the first time this has happened. Now and then, Internet companies indulge in what Zmijewski calls playing chicken. If they're fighting over a contract, they disconnect each other, and wait to see who blinks first. The number of irate customers each company faces will probably determine who does.

David Schaeffer, CEO Cogent, said the two companies had a ''peering'' contract, under which they for free exchanged traffic from each other's customers. But TeliaSonera breached the contract by not exchanging traffic in certain locations, and refusing to upgrade connections that were saturated, said Schaeffer, alleging that TeliaSonera was reacting to Cogent's recent expansion in the Nordic company's home territory.

Cogent cut its direct links to TeliaSonera on March 13. For a while, customers were still able to connect indirectly, through intermediaries connected to Cogent and TeliaSonera, but that possibility disappeared on Friday, according to Renesys.

TeliaSonera spokeswoman Maria Hillborg said the companies were trying to work out an agreement, but Cogent's Schaeffer denied that the companies were in negotiations.

Cogent has 15,000 customers, most of them large corporate, government and academic entities, who in turn provide ''tens of millions'' of people with Internet access. Most of the customers have backup links from other providers, or use the Cogent link as a backup to their main provider.