Remembering the great AT&T outage from seventeen years ago this month, in January, 1990; here are a few messages from the middle of January that year. PAT]
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 90 0:02:11 CST From: TELECOM Moderator To: snipped-for-privacy@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V10 #29 Message-ID:
TELECOM Digest Tue, 16 Jan 90 00:00:02 CST Volume 10 : Issue 29
Today's Topics: Moderator: Patrick Townson
Nationwide Long-Distance Outage (Rich Kulawiec) Who's Using Whom? (John Higdon)
[Moderator's Note: Our Usenet gateway machine, snipped-for-privacy@nwu.edu has been down for three days, and the Digest is not making it out to the comp.dcom.telecom newsgroup right now. When accuvax is back in service the unsent messages will be distributed. Please advise any Usenetters you may know of the problem. Thanks. PT] ----------------------------------------------------------------------Date: Mon, 15 Jan 90 16:17:29 MST From: Rich Kulawiec Subject: Nationwide Long-Distance Outage
CNN is reporting that AT&T says that some sort of major disruption of long-distance service started around 2:30 pm EST today. I've been unable to reach area codes 415, 317, 213, and 312; each attempt yields an "all circuits are busy" recording. CNN says that AT&T does not know the source of the trouble.
Rich Kulawiec
[Moderator's Note: As of 10 PM CST Monday night (as I am typing this), WGN-TV is interviewing an AT&T spokesperson who says the source of the problem is not yet known, but it is believed to be a software glitch. The problem is nationwide, resulting in many (most?) calls reaching an intercept message, 'Your call did not go through' (here in Chicago). The spokesperson said they are working frantically on the problem, but may not have service entirely restored before 'sometime Tuesday'. About half of my calls completed okay Monday evening, the other half failed. The network failure has caused considerable congestion on MCI/Sprint lines; and of course, as Higdon points out in the next message, some alternate carriers in fact use AT&T circuits for some of their calls. PT] ------------------------------Subject: Who's Using Whom? Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Date: 15 Jan 90 14:14:09 PST (Mon) From: John Higdon
AT&T long distance has been severely disrupted today in the Bay Area due to a major cable cut, according to an AT&T operator I talked to.
Why is this of any interest? Well, it seems that Sprint is down as well. Why? Sprint leases facilities from AT&T. So all of the ballyhoo about Sprint's fiber optics is, to some degree, actually AT&T's fiber optics.
Sort of reminds one of the old story about how all gasoline comes from the same delivery truck. We have all of the advertising about product differentiation, and it turns out that aspirin is aspirin after all.
So Sprint's advanced fiber optic network is, at least in part, AT&T's fiber optic network. Well, well. It is amazing what you can learn about someone when his pants are down!
John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 snipped-for-privacy@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !
[Moderator's Note: I really think the operator you interviewed spoke without full knowledge of the circumstances of the outage; that is, unless by coincidence there was also a major cable problem out there as well as the nationwide network problem. PT]Date: Wed, 17 Jan 90 0:25:27 CST From: TELECOM Moderator To: snipped-for-privacy@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V10 #30 Message-ID:
TELECOM Digest Wed, 17 Jan 90 00:25:19 CST Volume 10 : Issue 30
Today's Topics: Moderator: Patrick Townson
AT&T Reliability (System Administrator) Reporting of the AT&T Outage (David Tamkin) Reach Out and Touch Someone? (Al Donaldson) Re: Nationwide Long Distance Outage (Bill Berbenich) Re: Who's Using Whom? (John McHarry) Re: Who's Using Whom? (John Higdon) ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: AT&T Reliability Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Date: 15 Jan 90 21:45:45 PST (Mon) From: System Administrator
It appears that AT&T has solved their "software" problem, since calls now go through. Their original statement about a cable cut was certainly an understatement.
My question is this: what about those 800 customers who were promised (in all the TV ads) that if for any reason their 800 number went down, they would bring it up on one of their other lines within one hour. There are an awful lot of 800 numbers around here that were down all day without being restored on POTS lines, mainly, of course, because the entire network was down. Any recouse available to the customers?
This whole mess sure points out the fact that even Mother has her days!
John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 snipped-for-privacy@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !