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Storm Causes AT&T Outage Across Midwest
dstates writes "AT&T left users across several Midwestern states without cellular phone service yesterday. The outage apparently resulted from a power failure at a Michigan switching center and spread to affect level3 Internet communications. The powerful windstorm also left 400,000 users without electricity. Interestingly, except for a few reports in Chicago and Indianapolis papers, AT&T has managed to keep this out of the mainstream media. Widespread communication failures also followed Hurricane Ike in Texas earlier this year. With the increasing trend for users to drop landlines and rely only on cell phones, this is becoming an emergency preparedness issue." Yes this included me. Still does. At least my office still has power — maybe we'll just camp here tonight. :)
AT&T/Comcast/AT&T burned a LOT of bridges when they became Cingular. I used to be able to roam almost anywhere, and if a roaming tower was the best strength I connected to that. After cingular got involved they pissed off a lot of other carriers. Now my phone refuses to talk to any nearby roaming towers but tries to connect to that single AT&T tower about 12 miles away that gives me barely any signal. I have to hack my phones to disable this configuration to get decent cellphone service out of them.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
First Question of any contract: Any contract in which any of the party is unable to fulfill the terms of the contract will be is liable to either NOT collect remuneration of the said contract for that quantity, OR reimburse the amount for that period.
Will AT&T send me a check for the days my service was out?
Because last i checked, weather is not a cause for NOT fulfilling a contract. For the same reason i cannot claim weather for not paying my mortgage.
Question is, will AT&T refund the amount for the period of outage.
If not a class-action suit can be filed in coordination with other users.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
I wish I had mod points for you. I used to work for a WISP and had the "privilege" of climbing towers in god-awful weather after storms to restore service to our customers. It's scary enough to climb the things in normal weather. Doing it Upstate New York in January after a storm has coated the tower with ice is absolutely horrible.
The worst part was that was my first job and I only got paid $10/hr to scale the friggen things. Looking back on it I wasn't making nearly enough money to be risking my life like that. At least our customers were appreciative though. That helped more than you can imagine.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
You cell phone users just don't get it, do you?
One of the major reasons why they want you away from your landline service is that they don't have to comply with the state or fed rules, tariffs, and laws forcing them to maintain POTS service even through the worst of weather.
Lose a cell tower? Fine, two weeks to get it back up.
Lose a phone line, depending on your state, from 12 hours to a working week in compliance with PUC regulations (in Texas it's 5 days, then Austin gets froggy).
Business landline goes down, 3-5 hours, as fast as a tech can get on site after getting pulled from a lower priority job.
Business cell service breaks, ok, duh, you get the point now?
What is $15-$25/mo for basic POTS service that is there when you need it in comparison to $60+ cell service that is still not as dependable as we like it to be?
I'll keep my POTS service and call forward from it to my cell, keeps the telemarketers at bay.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
And neither are technology problems.
In 1998 Maine suffered the worst ice storm in decades. Power, telephone, and cellular service were affected. Yes, cable TV also.
In Gray, Maine, I was without power for 11 days. My sister in Searsport was without for 17 days, 2 of which were unnecessary - her house was about a quarter-mile in the woods, and the crews missed her line. She had power restored a few hours after calling in and reporting she was still out, and could see lights on at neighbors' houses. Darn.
Among the events that would inform the Midwest utilities:
1. Bangor Hydro-Electric, serving North-Central and Downeast Maine reported virtually 100% loss of transmission lines and 100% of customers affected. Central Maine Power reported most customers affected north of Portland, and most transmission lines down. Both utilities reported to major customers that restoration would take weeks, and they pretty much beat thet estimate. Not bad for rebuilding either 70% or 100% of their transmission network. BHE in particular had to replace completely many miles of hi-v transmission line, with poles snapped off. Availability of basic equipment like insulators became the limiting factor. In light of this, customers such as Verizon and cell carriers were told they were genuinely SOL.
2. The Verizon maintenance supervisor for the state had just relocated from Cape Cod, where he survived a similar event a year earlier. He immediately commandeered all generators, battery packs for SLCs etc, and emergency equipment from Mass, lower NY state, and beyond. Upstate NY was also affected and could spare nothing. His actions permitted his team to keep swapping the batteries out of SLCs, recharging them, and swapping to keep basic phone service running. He also asked for and got fuel from the Maine National Guard to keep the trucks and generators running. Most gas stations were down for lack of power.
3. As is the nature of winter storms, power lines suffer the most because they are highest on the poles. Telephone is next, and cable TV is usually lowest and suffers the least. Cable companies didn't bother much for restoration, since TV is the luxury you give up when the generator needs more gas than you have. Thankfully, this also meant most telephone service survived, and all they had to do was keep their gensets running. 'That's All'... It was a massive effort.
4. Cell service then was TDMA and CDMA, and NAMPS. It was good, despite the problems of the carriers having to do their own bucket-brigade battery swapping. They did terrically.
5. From my observations, quick action by carriers to put plans into action, clever thinking, and looking beyond the usual boundaries of support saved the day.
6. And one saving grace - the NBC affiliate in Portand broadcasts on Channel 6. Audio was available on most FM radios, way down on the band. When HD kicks in, this will be lost. No replacement I see.
It appears that AT&T is caught here with a central switch/datacenter that is stranded. We'll dissect their planning, no doubt, but ultimately they needed to plan for a week of power failure. I know that sounds preposterous, but my hospital clients at the time were even parking water trucks in the lot in case power outages resulted in public water supplies failing. Diesel tankers also came in. One hospital had backup privileges with a sister facility in Pennsylvania, and we would have transferred back-office processing there and flown/driven key personnel for a week to keep paychecks, billing, and patient care data current. Fortunately, my old stomping grounds were no longer my business. That hospital was out for 5 days, and ended up with a National Guard generator on site. The Guardsmen went without power for their armory to do that, sleeping in trucks and tents. Fortunately, it was not that cold for January. If it was 10 degrees colder, a lot of people would have died, never ready for that sort of trouble.
I escaped to friends in New Hampshire. Yes, I'm a wuss.
AT&T should own up to bad planning, despite the unusual weather. Redundancy is crucial, expensive, and worth it.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.