The Los Angeles Times reported this morning (10-19) that a downtown Verizon central office switch experienced a major failure yesterday. This had a domino effect that knocked out cellular service in the area and also expanded to knock out some 150,000 Verizon wireline customers in the area.
This lasted for several hours. City officials drove to the nearest radio station to advise them of the problem (no wireline, no cell service).
I wonder if this cut off all the wireless providers in the area? Somehow, I suspect it did since they are so interdependant to keep network costs down.
This is the heart of former GTE-land. The article claimed a disk drive crashed and the backup wouldn't/couldn't/didn't take over.
The typical hype was that additional police were posted to handle any potential problems. The heart of Long Beach is a major discontented ghetto.