Storm Causes AT&T Outage Across Midwest 213
dstates writes "AT&T left users across several Midwestern states without cellular phone service yesterday. The outage apparently resulted from a power failure at a Michigan switching center and spread to affect level3 Internet communications. The powerful windstorm also left 400,000 users without electricity. Interestingly, except for a few reports in Chicago and Indianapolis papers, AT&T has managed to keep this out of the mainstream media. Widespread communication failures also followed Hurricane Ike in Texas earlier this year. With the increasing trend for users to drop landlines and rely only on cell phones, this is becoming an emergency preparedness issue." Yes this included me. Still does. At least my office still has power — maybe we'll just camp here tonight. :)
Re:Roaming? (Score:5, Informative)
They are trying to fix it [datacenterknowledge.com], much the same way that Sarbanes-Oxley fixes accounting problems. Communications providers are required to keep an 8 hour power backup on all sites and 24+ backup on 'important' sites like switching centers or something along those lines. The idea is that storms like those that hit New Orleans would not cause the problems that they did. This storm is exactly the thing this measure by the FCC is supposed to fix... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Legislators (Goodbye FCC) do NOT know how to run businesses. Some perhaps, but on the whole they are terrible business advisers and this legislation only proves it in the aftermath of this storm. I hold a harsh opinion of this situation because AT&T should have had backups in place to handle this situation. All Communications providers deal with such things and AT&T has enough history to know what to do... shame on them.
Re:Roaming? (Score:4, Informative)
We're staying with relatives on a farm south of Chicago. All the AT&T phones lost their ability to dial out, yet they could receive incoming calls. Our T-Mobile phones were fine.
You're right, this is a case of corporate power struggles trumping customer service, as any of these phones should automatically fail over to another GSM network. In an emergency, dialing out is essential.
Re:Will AT&T repay me for the days my service (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Will AT&T repay me for the days my service (Score:1, Informative)
i just called them and while they won't say they had an issue, they gave me a $10 credit
Re:Roaming? (Score:5, Informative)
AT&T/Comcast/AT&T burned a LOT of bridges when they became Cingular. I used to be able to roam almost anywhere, and if a roaming tower was the best strength I connected to that. After cingular got involved they pissed off a lot of other carriers. Now my phone refuses to talk to any nearby roaming towers but tries to connect to that single AT&T tower about 12 miles away that gives me barely any signal
I don't think that really has to do with burning bridges. It has to do with AT&T not wanting to pay money for you to roam. It costs them money every single minute that you are using another carriers network.
I used to have a T-Mobile phone (had to ditch them for Verizon when I moved in with the GF -- no signal at her house) and they did the same thing. They would disable roaming on AT&T/Cingular in areas where they had coverage. Even if you were in a zone with no T-Mobile service you couldn't hop onto Cingular. To be able to roam on Cingular you had to drive out of the county where T-Mobile had native coverage -- then you'd be able to connect to and use the Cingular network. If you were within the county where they had native service but happened to be in a dead zone you were SOL -- roaming wasn't allowed.
I have to hack my phones to disable this configuration to get decent cellphone service out of them.
I'm surprised that worked. With GSM your home network decides whether or not you will be allowed to connect to that roaming partner based on the location area code [wikipedia.org]. If that LAC indicates an area where they have native service they probably won't let you connect to the roaming partner. If it indicates an area where they don't have native service then you stand a better chance of being allowed to use that roaming partner.
Re:Roaming? (Score:3, Informative)
You're right, this is a case of corporate power struggles trumping customer service, as any of these phones should automatically fail over to another GSM network. In an emergency, dialing out is essential.
T-Mobile has been known to enable unrestricted roaming during natural disasters. During non-disasters they limit the areas that you can roam based on where they have native service. If they have native service in your city you will never be allowed to connect to AT&T no matter how crappy the T-Mobile signal is. During some natural disasters they've removed this restriction and you can connect to AT&T (and other GSM providers) at will.
Comes in handy if the T-Mobile network goes down or is congested. I've never been in that situation but a few friends of mine have and were very thankful that they removed the roaming restrictions.
Not a conspiracy (Score:5, Informative)
AT&T has managed to keep this out of the mainstream media
I'm in Arizona, and I saw that AT&T service was down in the midwest from multiple sources, before I finished my first cup of coffee. If there's been any lack of information reported about this, my guess is that's because the press is more concerned about hundreds of thousands who are without power in below freezing conditions, rather than a few people who can't make phone calls.
Re:Roaming? (Score:4, Informative)
Nokia phones can get set to have a preferred tower ID. I get into them and set the preferred tower id to a roaming tower that gives full strength at my house. I used to have a blackjack, but got rid of it because it cant do that.
the preferred tower setting overrides it somehow and it works. I've been doing this for the past 4 years and they still have not canceled my account.
Re:Roaming? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Will AT&T repay me for the days my service (Score:3, Informative)
If the facility had the roof blown off due to the 60mph+ winds we had, and caused a safety hazard due to exposed wiring, etc.. I certainly can see a case, but this is all conjecture. Unless you (and I don't) have facts to support your postulation, we can go on feeding the echo chamber more and more!
Re:Roaming? (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know about landlines in the US, but in Europe most of them are in the ground. A storm doesn't really bother them.
Re:Not conspiracy, but AT&T has not been forth (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Roaming? (Score:3, Informative)
Then your network must allow roaming in that particular area. With GSM the network that you connect to (even if it's the native network) contacts your home location register [wikipedia.org] to find out if your phone is allowed to connect to that particular part of the network and what features are enabled on your account.
If your provider saw fit they could disable roaming and no amount of hacks to your device would override it.
I've been doing this for the past 4 years and they still have not canceled my account.
I doubt they ever would, unless you are predominately using the roaming partner instead of your native network. AT&T and T-Mobile both have policies in place to cancel the accounts of customers that go over a certain threshold of minutes used on roaming partners. For AT&T I think it's 40% of your minute usage. T-Mobile is 50% IIRC.
emergency calls do whatever it takes (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Roaming? (Score:4, Informative)
There are two things at play here: The ability to control network selection on the handset, and what the cellular networks allow you to do.
On GSM devices, there's a flag on the SIM card that tells your phone whether or not to show you the "manual network selection" menu. With AT&T, their SIM cards are configured to disable this menu when you're in the US, but enable it when outside the US.
However, on many devices, you can force them to ignore the SIM setting and have manual network selection enabled always. With Motorola phones, you can do it via SEEM editing, and there's obviously a way to do it on Symbian as well. This is what Lumpy is doing.
Shakrai, what you're talking about is the actual roaming agreements between providers. This also affects network selection. Providers can specify which phones are allowed on their network. Legally, all phones must be allowed to associate with all GSM towers to provide 911 capability, but they can be limited to just that. For example, when I only have T-Mobile coverage, my AT&T BlackBerry shows "SOS" where the signal bars usually are.
AT&T and T-Mobile have been doing this for a while. They had roaming agreements where specific cell sites would allow the other operator's phones in areas where the other operator's coverage was spotty.
So when Lumpy uses manual network selection on his phone, which he had to enable by modifying something, the rules that the operators set forth on their networks still apply. If he tries to associate with a T-Mobile tower in certain areas, he will most likely get locked out, but in other areas he may not.
Making AT&T pay... (Score:4, Informative)
A Credit is NOT the same as a check.
Reimbursement needs to be in the same terms of original contract.
You don't give them CREDIT for providing you service. They take your money: period.
Similarly, ask for a check or money order sent to your address. If they refuse, sue them in small claims court for violating a contract.
Why should you accept CREDIT when they don't accept yours?
A Credit is just an interest-free loan to these guys.
Refuse to accept unilateral changes to your contract and demand the repayment from them in check or cash.
Better yet, do the following:
1) Send a registered letter to their local office demanding financial compensation for the days not in service and quote the contract. Give them 7 calendar days to pay (not working days).
2) Wait for 7 days and when they don't respond, file a complaint with small claims court. Ask the clerk to send a notice to their local exchange in telephone directory with another 7 calendar days to respond.
3) They still wont respond for $5 or $10.
4) Enter a default judgment. Tell the judge they insulted him/her by deeming this court to be beneath their status (appeals to vanity and not logic). The judge will be furious on their own to consider MAXIMUM enforcement.
5) Get the judge to declare that AT&T is in default of a debt to you. This is very important. Because this disassociates the original contract from the debt. In other words, in the eyes of law, AT&T is indebted to you for the said amount as if they borrowed money from you (in a way true).
5) Now the judge will ask what do you want to do: Request that the judge allows you to seize their assets for payment of this debt. Get a bailiff order.
6) Call your close friends/relatives and state there (from a pay phone or get somebody else to call) to gather at the local AT&T office for a fire sale.
7) Get the Sheriff and a deputy. Go to the AT&T office and paste the order to their door stating their assets are being seized for discharging a debt. Throw every employee out. Ask any protesters to be considered as disobeying a judge's order.
8) Ask the sheriff to seize their equipment and conduct an auction at the doors with Sheriff and his officers as guards.
9) Your friends and relatives should have arrived by now. Make them bid 10 cents or 20 cents for iPhones, telephones, routers, computers, etc., and sell it to them at that price.
10) Finish the sale within 15 mins enough to collct your debt. The longer you delay, the exponential the probability that some retarded employee will call a AT&T lawyer who gets the judgment suspended.
11) Now you have a nice collection of worthy items for the $10 you were owed by AT&T. Plus AT&T credit is screwed because you had a lien and auction of their property.
If you had owed 30 cents on a mortgage that was overdue, ANY bank would do the same to you.