ATT Wireless Cell phone outage

[mike stenson]

As it turned out, they had a coding mistake while adding to the network that took it down; I suspect a serious routing issue. But at least it wasn't something nefarious...

All it takes is the right typo in the wrong place....


and I typically find out about it several years later, in the middle of the night.

[Patty Hann]

Saw not a few articles that have questioned the wisdom of not having a LL as backup.
Some people in remote areas had no way to contact anyone.
People with medical conditions come to mind, but also other folks.
Still hangin' onto my LL and I live in a Metro area.
Not putting "all the eggs in one basket", juneau...

[Jim Becker]

Patty, unfortunately, land lines are not just disappearing because people opt to just be wireless. It's also about infrastructure. The old copper wiring plant is in beyond horrible condition in many geographies and the gear that runs it is no longer made with parts to keep existing class 5 switches relegated to EBAY in many cases. While in some areas, fiber has replaced copper or is in process of replacing it, the financial incentive to move to fiber in huge portions of the geography is just not there for investors. I used that word on purpose...the telecommunications business is totally pegged to the stock market and return on investment rules there.

There's nothing wrong with having a "landline" if it's available to you and you want to pay for it. But overall, society has moved on in a big way globally and that's where the money is. Consequently, that's also where the investment is going.

[Bill Howatt]

Our provider, serving a small rural area, offers VOIP phone service which we have and is pretty good but they will tell subscribers if they have a medical condition it should not be the only telephone mechanism they have.

[Brian Elfert]

Patty, unfortunately, land lines are not just disappearing because people opt to just be wireless. It's also about infrastructure. The old copper wiring plant is in beyond horrible condition in many geographies and the gear that runs it is no longer made with parts to keep existing class 5 switches relegated to EBAY in many cases. While in some areas, fiber has replaced copper or is in process of replacing it, the financial incentive to move to fiber in huge portions of the geography is just not there for investors. I used that word on purpose...the telecommunications business is totally pegged to the stock market and return on investment rules there.

There's nothing wrong with having a "landline" if it's available to you and you want to pay for it. But overall, society has moved on in a big way globally and that's where the money is. Consequently, that's also where the investment is going.

I have read that telephone companies in some locations are replacing the big old 5ESS and similar switches with SIP to analog gateways inside the central office buildings. You don't need many gateways when only about 15% of households have a land line these days. Businesses of any decent size have long used digital phone lines instead of analog. Further, a lot of companies with enough employees to have an actual phone system have gone to cloud based telephony.

[Jim Becker]

I have read that telephone companies in some locations are replacing the big old 5ESS and similar switches with SIP to analog gateways inside the central office buildings. You don't need many gateways when only about 15% of households have a land line these days. Businesses of any decent size have long used digital phone lines instead of analog. Further, a lot of companies with enough employees to have an actual phone system have gone to cloud based telephony.

That's been going on for decades for both Lucent (5ESS) and Nortel (DMS). But even that is not inexpensive and with the copper plant "out there" is really horrible shape in so many areas, even using the softswitches isn't going to keep land lines running forever. Here in Verizon land, at least where FiOS fiber is supported, if a copper line fails, the customer gets fiber. They can still choose "regulated" service, but they have to pay a lot more for it. If they choose the now-standard, non-regulated offer, it's still expensive but at least has more features. In areas that are not built out for fiber and are not intended to get fiber due to investment barriers relative to geography and population, wireless is the only choice other than the local cableco if they happen to offer phone service...which is still unregulated, unlike traditional copper.

As to companies, yea, there's been a big movement over the past decade and a half to cloud based subscriptions. In addition to CPE solutions, I also sold cloud setups using the same technology prior to retirement.

[Brian Elfert]

About 10 years ago, I PMed him on Facebook during a local outage, and he looked up my number, could see what tower I was connected to, then dug a little deeper, and found out that something had happened in Indianapolis, 60 miles away. Maybe a dead server or construction work took out a trunk line, something like that (I've slept since then).

My employer has two fiber lines between buildings about two miles apart. One fiber line goes pretty much direct and the other takes a diverse route. The diverse route goes at least 25 miles south of our location because we have had fiber cuts in the diverse line multiple times and the fiber cuts were at least 25 miles south. I have no idea why the line is routed that far away. We assumed a diverse route meant it is routed through the other side of downtown, not miles away. Both buildings are close to the size of a city block. The fiber comes out of different sides of the buildings.