IP: a "scattered" telephone failure (may have been much more than the NYT reported)

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/national/regional/nj-phone-interrupt.html


A Bell Atlantic equipment failure cut regular and emergency service to tens 
of thousands of New Jersey customers Tuesday, and company officials were 
unable to say when service would be fully restored. After the service 
interruption started, 20 communities were switched to a backup system for 
911 service.

The equipment failure began at 12:27 a.m. and caused scattered and sporadic 
disruptions in Bergen, Essex, Union and Passaic Counties throughout the 
day, said Soraya Rodriguez, a Bell Atlantic spokeswoman. She said that by 
3:30 a.m., all 911 systems had been switched to backup.

[and a quote to make history -- funny definition of relaibility. When I was 
designing telephone stuff we most likely would have heard a big yell from 
195 over this type of failure djf]

Ms. Rodriguez insisted that Bell Atlantic's system was reliable. "We have 
all the confidence in our networks," she said. "Unfortunately, things do 
happen."