Re: DSL problems (PacBell and Covad)

[Nick Bastin <nbastin () mil3 com>]

> > PacBell's DSL outage was reportedly due to a switch failure, although
> > PacBell couldn't tell or wouldn't tell, how many customers were affected
> > by it.
> >
> > Is this simply a case of different providers having switch problems at
> > the same time?  Typical problems of deploying bleeding edge technology?
>
> Pachell also has often a response time problem. I know of at least two
> locations were down for over 5 days, because they had a switch problem
> there and it took them that long to get it repaired.

This is also the case for Bell Atlantic.  I've been down twice in the last
two month for over 5 days (at my home), and I know of several other
customers who have had multi-day outages.  Widespread outages seem to be
resolved within 24-48 hours (DC/Nor VA/MD was down recently for almost 2
days), which is bad enough, but problems invoving a single CO, or just a
few customers, tend to be resolved whenever someone at BA feels like
finding something to do, which apparently isn't often.  Call support is
terrible as well, but we won't even go into that.

Normally, with issues like this, I'd say tough luck and find yourself
another provider, but in most of these long-outage cases, at least on the
east coast, the problem has been with the circuit being down, which, in
most areas, is still provided by your telco.  So even if you had a
different provider supplying your connection (Flashcom, etc.), you would
still be down.

I thought this was supposed to be a competitive market?

--
Nick Bastin
Software Developer
OPNET Technologies