Re: Thousands cut off from phone service (land AND cell)

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Bob Frankston" <Bob19-0501 () bobf frankston com>
Date: April 9, 2009 3:29:58 PM EDT
To: <dave () farber net>, "'ip'" <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: RE: [IP] Thousands cut off from phone service (land AND cell)

Interesting that it's only ATT and Verizon customers. This is another  
reminder of the price we pay for a network architecture based on the  
need to keep bits in billable paths instead of allowing bits to flow  
free of the constraints of billing. I’m reminded of the week the stock  
market was shut down after 9/11 as Verizon spliced thousands of legacy  
phone lines as if it was 1930.

If this had been a real emergency …

As the story says: “Both Verizon and Verizon Wireless rely on AT&T,  
the dominant local carrier, to carry their phone traffic back to their  
networks:” with the emphasis on their networks. A crime scene indeed –  
where is the responsibility for our vulnerability?

This isn’t to say that we can protect against all failures but we can  
improve resilience. But why should we lose the ability to send a few  
bits in an emergency just because lose the capacity to support high  
speed video?


-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Thursday, April 09, 2009 14:13
To: ip
Subject: [IP] Thousands cut off from phone service (land AND cell)



Begin forwarded message:

From: Ole Jacobsen <ole () cisco com>
Date: April 9, 2009 12:22:46 PM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Thousands cut off from phone service (land AND cell)
Reply-To: Ole Jacobsen <ole () cisco com>


For IP:

Talk about having all eggs in one basket:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/09/BAP816VTE6.DTL&feed=rss.bayarea


Thousands of people in parts of Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and San Benito
counties are without telephone service - both landline and cellular -
and will need to drive themselves to a hospital or a police or fire
station if they have an emergency, officials said.

The widespread outage began at about 2 a.m. as a result of a cut
fiber-optic cable belonging to AT&T, authorities said. AT&T and
Verizon customers in Gilroy, Morgan Hill may be among those affected.

Customers whose service is affected hear a fast busy signal or a
recorded message saying the network is unavailable.

There was no immediate explanation for how the AT&T cable was cut.




Ole J. Jacobsen
Editor and Publisher,  The Internet Protocol Journal
Cisco Systems
Tel: +1 408-527-8972   Mobile: +1 415-370-4628
E-mail: ole () cisco com  URL: http://www.cisco.com/ipj






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