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Communications black hole
Aug. 30th, 2005 03:48 pmI swear, today's telephone companies are less competent than ever. It appears that since about 10 am this morning, my town has been cut off entirely from the rest of the state. We can call each other (same exchange) but not to any other number outside our local exchange. Callers outside get a fast busy signal if they try to dial us. Repeated reports to SBC on the situation produce no acknowledgement or admission that there is a problem. Of course, you can't actually report the problem from inside town, because there are no local operators or anything like that any more. All calls to reach service or the business office are routed to Timbuktu and back, so of course, all get the fast busy.
Tin cans and string work better than SBC. I gather that cell phones are faring no better locally, since the closest towers are linked to the network by landlines that, yep, pass through the same central exchange. Dead end.
(No, I'm not anywhere near the storm area where they have valid excuse for difficulties. No wind or rain here in a couple of weeks in fact.)
Edit: Services restored shortly before 5 pm local. About six hours of outage. Among other things, 911 service was unreachable from all numbers on the exchange because the dispatchers are located in another town nine miles away. So far, SBC is still not acknowledging that there was a problem. Could have been an equipment failure, such things happen. Or a cable cut somewhere, though I think that would take them longer to fix, since the closest repair crews capable of anything as complex as that are 40 miles away or more. I think it more likely that someone made an error while programming the ESS and simply cut us off by routing things incorrectly.
Tin cans and string work better than SBC. I gather that cell phones are faring no better locally, since the closest towers are linked to the network by landlines that, yep, pass through the same central exchange. Dead end.
(No, I'm not anywhere near the storm area where they have valid excuse for difficulties. No wind or rain here in a couple of weeks in fact.)
Edit: Services restored shortly before 5 pm local. About six hours of outage. Among other things, 911 service was unreachable from all numbers on the exchange because the dispatchers are located in another town nine miles away. So far, SBC is still not acknowledging that there was a problem. Could have been an equipment failure, such things happen. Or a cable cut somewhere, though I think that would take them longer to fix, since the closest repair crews capable of anything as complex as that are 40 miles away or more. I think it more likely that someone made an error while programming the ESS and simply cut us off by routing things incorrectly.
