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, Interesting)
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 have to hack my phones to disable this configuration to get decent cellphone service out of them.
I was wondering. (Score:1, Interesting)
I live in Indiana and the ATT&T trucks have been out in force.
Mostly just sitting in their vans, next to switching stations, drinking coffee and eating doughnuts. Now it makes sense.
Will AT&T repay me for the days my service was (Score:5, Interesting)
First Question of any contract: Any contract in which any of the party is unable to fulfill the terms of the contract will be is liable to either NOT collect remuneration of the said contract for that quantity, OR reimburse the amount for that period.
Will AT&T send me a check for the days my service was out?
Because last i checked, weather is not a cause for NOT fulfilling a contract. For the same reason i cannot claim weather for not paying my mortgage.
Question is, will AT&T refund the amount for the period of outage.
If not a class-action suit can be filed in coordination with other users.
Coming soon... (Score:1, Interesting)
If you think today was fun, wait until April 2009 when the unions go on strike against AT&T. The company believes it can weather the strike by training salespeople and programmers to climb poles, but c'mon, we all know how well that will work out.
Re:Roaming? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish I had mod points for you. I used to work for a WISP and had the "privilege" of climbing towers in god-awful weather after storms to restore service to our customers. It's scary enough to climb the things in normal weather. Doing it Upstate New York in January after a storm has coated the tower with ice is absolutely horrible.
The worst part was that was my first job and I only got paid $10/hr to scale the friggen things. Looking back on it I wasn't making nearly enough money to be risking my life like that. At least our customers were appreciative though. That helped more than you can imagine.
What about the recent ice storm in the Northeast? (Score:2, Interesting)
Natural disasters seem to be all the rage lately.
A few weeks ago, the U.S. Northeast was hit by a major ice storm. At the peak, ~1.4 million people were without power [reuters.com] across Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and upstate New York. FEMA declared emergencies in several areas, and each state declared emergencies and disaster areas in additional areas. Like a lot of people, I lost power for several days, which means I also lost heat and water (not on municipal water or on piped gas). This guy [tordevries.com] had the presence of mind to take a few pictures of the ice layers... it was kind of astonishing, at least to me.
Re:What about the recent ice storm in the Northeas (Score:3, Interesting)
Welcome to Canada - we see that all the time in Montreal; it's actually quite beautiful, until it gets heavy enough to snap trees, down powerlines, make sidewalks and roads unnavigable.
Re:Roaming? (Score:0, Interesting)
how many Americans don't even see the point of SMS
IDK Y not ask my BFF Jill?
Answer: "Not enough" since we're getting inane txt-speak commercials about it.
A major reason not to cancel POTS service (Score:4, Interesting)
You cell phone users just don't get it, do you?
One of the major reasons why they want you away from your landline service is that they don't have to comply with the state or fed rules, tariffs, and laws forcing them to maintain POTS service even through the worst of weather.
Lose a cell tower? Fine, two weeks to get it back up.
Lose a phone line, depending on your state, from 12 hours to a working week in compliance with PUC regulations (in Texas it's 5 days, then Austin gets froggy).
Business landline goes down, 3-5 hours, as fast as a tech can get on site after getting pulled from a lower priority job.
Business cell service breaks, ok, duh, you get the point now?
What is $15-$25/mo for basic POTS service that is there when you need it in comparison to $60+ cell service that is still not as dependable as we like it to be?
I'll keep my POTS service and call forward from it to my cell, keeps the telemarketers at bay.
Ice storms and winter weather are nothing new (Score:4, Interesting)
And neither are technology problems.
In 1998 Maine suffered the worst ice storm in decades. Power, telephone, and cellular service were affected. Yes, cable TV also.
In Gray, Maine, I was without power for 11 days. My sister in Searsport was without for 17 days, 2 of which were unnecessary - her house was about a quarter-mile in the woods, and the crews missed her line. She had power restored a few hours after calling in and reporting she was still out, and could see lights on at neighbors' houses. Darn.
Among the events that would inform the Midwest utilities:
1. Bangor Hydro-Electric, serving North-Central and Downeast Maine reported virtually 100% loss of transmission lines and 100% of customers affected. Central Maine Power reported most customers affected north of Portland, and most transmission lines down. Both utilities reported to major customers that restoration would take weeks, and they pretty much beat thet estimate. Not bad for rebuilding either 70% or 100% of their transmission network. BHE in particular had to replace completely many miles of hi-v transmission line, with poles snapped off. Availability of basic equipment like insulators became the limiting factor. In light of this, customers such as Verizon and cell carriers were told they were genuinely SOL.
2. The Verizon maintenance supervisor for the state had just relocated from Cape Cod, where he survived a similar event a year earlier. He immediately commandeered all generators, battery packs for SLCs etc, and emergency equipment from Mass, lower NY state, and beyond. Upstate NY was also affected and could spare nothing. His actions permitted his team to keep swapping the batteries out of SLCs, recharging them, and swapping to keep basic phone service running. He also asked for and got fuel from the Maine National Guard to keep the trucks and generators running. Most gas stations were down for lack of power.
3. As is the nature of winter storms, power lines suffer the most because they are highest on the poles. Telephone is next, and cable TV is usually lowest and suffers the least. Cable companies didn't bother much for restoration, since TV is the luxury you give up when the generator needs more gas than you have. Thankfully, this also meant most telephone service survived, and all they had to do was keep their gensets running. 'That's All'... It was a massive effort.
4. Cell service then was TDMA and CDMA, and NAMPS. It was good, despite the problems of the carriers having to do their own bucket-brigade battery swapping. They did terrically.
5. From my observations, quick action by carriers to put plans into action, clever thinking, and looking beyond the usual boundaries of support saved the day.
6. And one saving grace - the NBC affiliate in Portand broadcasts on Channel 6. Audio was available on most FM radios, way down on the band. When HD kicks in, this will be lost. No replacement I see.
It appears that AT&T is caught here with a central switch/datacenter that is stranded. We'll dissect their planning, no doubt, but ultimately they needed to plan for a week of power failure. I know that sounds preposterous, but my hospital clients at the time were even parking water trucks in the lot in case power outages resulted in public water supplies failing. Diesel tankers also came in. One hospital had backup privileges with a sister facility in Pennsylvania, and we would have transferred back-office processing there and flown/driven key personnel for a week to keep paychecks, billing, and patient care data current. Fortunately, my old stomping grounds were no longer my business. That hospital was out for 5 days, and ended up with a National Guard generator on site. The Guardsmen went without power for their armory to do that, sleeping in trucks and tents. Fortunately, it was not that cold for January. If it was 10 degrees colder, a lot of people would have died, never ready for that sort of trouble.
I escaped to friends in New Hampshire. Yes, I'm a wuss.
AT&T should own up to bad planning, despite the unusual weather. Redundancy is crucial, expensive, and worth it.
People are used to this now. Standards are lower! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Coming soon... (Score:3, Interesting)
I worked during the last strike. I was doing repair line duty. And then we had those massive storms in the midwest and my life was very miserable for four days. It was really really depressing talking to all of those people.
Re:Roaming? (Score:3, Interesting)
there are major cultural differences between Japan/South Korea and the U.S. to be sure, but there are also fundamental socioeconomic & technological differences as well. these things are inextricably tied to one another i think, so you really can't discuss one without the other.
one major point of divergence is Japan's more progressive approach to public infrastructure. whereas the US favors privatization and deregulation, the Japanese government takes a more pro-active approach in promoting technological progress. for example, the government owns a 1/3rd stake in Japan's largest telecom/cellular phone carrier/ISP, NTT (Nippon Telegraph & Telephone). this hybrid private/socialized approach is similar to Japan's health care system, which, while provided by the private sector, is heavily regulated through price controls determined by negotiations between the government and industry leaders ever couple of years.
the Japanese government also actively funds the sciences and technology. in the mid 90's Japan invested 2.6% of their GDP into R&D, which is about on par with the US, which invested 2.5% at the time. however, whereas US funding is focused primarily on defense, Japan's funding has been focused on non-military R&D, which far exceeds the US. and while government funded (non-defense-related) R&D has been decreasing in the US over the past decade, R&D funding in Japan has roughly doubled--largely due to efforts to intensify international research cooperation (creating world class research facilities within Japan and abroad) and also to strengthen Japan's human and physical infrastructure for basic sciences within universities.
but Japan's rapid pace of technological progress isn't just due to publicly funded basic research. there have also been reports in the media that Toyota's hybrid gas-electric technology was largely subsidized by the government, which is in line with the Japanese government's history of working closely with domestic industries. and through NTT the Japanese government has also provided its citizens with faster and cheaper broadband. as a result, Japan has the highest FttH penetration in the world.
so what came first, the Japanese government's interventionist policies or Japan's technophilic culture? it's hard to say, but whichever is the case, this system clearly has its advantages. Sweden is another country with similar public policy, and in both cases it seems to serve the public better than a strictly free market approach. not only do individuals enjoy better/more advanced public infrastructure (and at a far lower cost), but the Japanese economy has proven extremely resilient even during global economic downturns.
Re:Roaming? (Score:3, Interesting)
Crap, I just made a similar post above before I saw yours. If I'd seen yours first I'd have modded you up.
That is exactly the problem; because we built our infrastructure back when everything was bleeding edge first-generation technology, the world has passed us behind. Our internet infrastructure is still based on ARPANET-era lines in spots, our ISPs are still using first-generation broadband and because of municipalities granting monopolies they are raping us on pricing (I paid for unlimited internet that you advertised to me, MAKE IT UNLIMITED for God's sake! Let your yea be yea and your nay be nay, doing otherwise is FRAUD. It doesn't matter that I've never even gone over 20GB, I don't like the fact that I have ANY limit besides bit rates), using infrastructure paid for in full BY US (taxpayers), not them, and of course the electric companies are still riding on the backs of taxpayer-paid lines and they won't make the investments to run new cables underground whenever a road is repaved.
That should be law; whenever a street is repaved, ALL utilities are moved undground. It's amazing how "clean" streets (mostly in private housing and industrialdevelopments) feel when there isn't a rat's nest of overhead lines and utility poles all over the place, cluttering up the landscape.
Re:If All You Have Is a Cell Phone... (Score:3, Interesting)
Least with my HF rigs - only infrastructure I depend on for communications are the laws of physics and the presence of time/space.
Interesting in this consumer society where paying a bill insinuates the right to whine. Kudos to those that do rather than gripe.