Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway From: myerston@cts.sri.com Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: AT&T as a "Backup" For US Sprint et al Message-ID: Date: 10 Oct 89 17:38:00 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Organization: SRI Intl, Inc., Menlo Park, CA 94025 [(415)326-6200] Lines: 19 Approved: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 440, message 11 of 12 It must be amusing (or maybe depressing) to AT&T network planners to find that whenever one of the other Common Carriers experiences outages, the expectation is that AT&T will be able to instantly provide overflow capacity at a pre-divestiture P.01 grade of service. Such outages are usually reported as "SPRINT fiber cut, AT&T circuits overloaded" as if each were equally to blame!. The fact that the OCCs routinely use AT&T facilities to complete calls to remote locations is equally unknown to press and public. It would interesting to find out how much of AT&T's traffic SPRINT or MCI could carry in a emergency. In fact, one of the strengths of the OCCs is that they have such great backup facilities: AT&T. [On this basis it makes sense to use an OCC as your principal carrier with AT&T as backup/overflow] It will be interesting to see what happens as AT&T adjusts its network to reflect its share of the market.